Spatial and temporal variations in lithospheric strength along the Louisville Seamount Chain

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The first phase of this proposal focuses on developing new techniques and software to process and display data collected on the rock cores' physical properties, including density, porosity, colour properties, and concentration of potassium, thorium, and uranium in the rock. These tools will enable us to better identify and quantify real changes in these properties, rather than spurious variations caused by the breaks and fractures in the rock, and will enable future expeditions to do these analyses in real time, which provides valuable information for geochemical and petrological studies both during and after the expedition.The second phase of this proposal is directed at determining the vertical movements of the Louisville seamounts, which were once at or above sea level, but now lie over a kilometer under water, and how these movements reflect the strength of the outer part of the Earth, the lithosphere, underlying each seamount. We will be looking at how this strength varies over time at an individual seamount, as the lithosphere 'relaxes' under the load of the volcano, and also how it varies along the length of the Louisville Seamount Chain. This along-chain variation should predominantly reflect the variations in the age of the lithosphere when each volcano formed, but may also contain information about the impact of the hotspot that formed the seamounts and the geochemistry of the volcanoes themselves.