Research Vessels

Rarely a day goes by without earthquakes shaking the Alaska Peninsula, a string of volcanoes curving off the Alaska mainland into the Pacific. Just off shore, two tectonic plates are converging: The Pacific plate is bending under the North American plate and pushing deep into the Earth. Along this subduction zone, scientists have noticed something unusual. Two adjacent sections that appear almost identical in large-scale characteristics—temperature, angle of subduction, age of the rocks—are exhibiting very different earthquake behaviors over short spans of just tens of kilometers. One section is highly active with small earthquakes; the other is more quiet but has large earthquakes every 50 to 75 years. To get a closer look, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory’s research ship, the R/V Marcus G. Langseth, ran seismic surveys to map the ocean floor and the earth beneath it.

The New Jersey shoreline that sea birds wandered during the last ice age is about 90 miles east of today’s beaches, tens of meters beneath the sea floor. As the ice melted, sea level gradually rose and flooded the coastal terrain, and sedimentation carried out its relentless burial of things past.

This summer, a group of scientists spent several weeks aboard the R/V Marcus G. Langseth looking into that past. Using sound waves, they collected data that will be used to build 3D images of the sediment beneath the ocean floor. They hope to be able to peel back layers of the 3D images to see how coastal landscapes responded to rising sea levels and hurricanes through history.

Scientists using underwater sensors to explore Lake Rotomahana in New Zealand have uncovered remnants of the Pink Terraces,” once considered the eighth natural wonder of the world.

November 12, 2007 -The academic community’s flagship seismic-research vessel, to be operated by Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, was dedicated in Galveston, Tex., Nov 12. The R/V Marcus G. Langseth, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation for use by universities, research institutes and government agencies across the nation, will generate CAT-scan-like 3D images of magma chambers, faults and other structures miles below the world’s seabeds.