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Adams Seamount

Submarine volcano above the Pitcairn hotspot in the central Pacific Ocean

Field	Value
name	Adams Seamount, Forty Mile Reef
depth	39 m (128 ft)
height	3,500 m (11,500 ft)
location	Pacific Ocean, SW of Pitcairn Island
coordinates
last_eruption	50 BCE ± 1000 years

Adams Seamount (also known as Forty Mile Reef) is a submarine volcano above the Pitcairn hotspot in the central Pacific Ocean about 100 km southwest of Pitcairn Island.

Geography and geomorphology

Adams is part of a field of about 90 seamounts 90 km east-southeast away from Pitcairn Island, and the largest of these. Adams lies southeast of another large seamount, Bounty Seamount. Most of these seamounts except for Adams and Bounty are less than 0.5 km high. They were discovered in 1989 by the RV Sonne research ship.

It is a conical seamount rising 3500 m from the sea floor to about 39 m

Its slopes are covered by recent lava flows, volcanic debris and hyaloclastite. Lava flows feature aa lava characteristics and lava tubes, while deeper parts of the edifice are covered with lapilli and scoria. Parasitic vents form cones and mounds on its flanks.

Geology

Adams and the other seamounts were created by the Pitcairn hotspot, and these seamounts are its present-day location. This hotspot is one among several hotspots in the Pacific Ocean, along with the Austral hotspot, Hawaii hotspot, Louisville hotspot, Samoa hotspot and Society hotspot. The seamounts rise from a 30 million years old crust.

Alkali basalt, trachyte and tholeiite have been dredged from Adams Seamount.

Eruption history

The fresh appearance of samples and the lack of sedimentation indicates that Adams Seamount is a recently active seamount. Potassium-argon dating of rocks dredged from Adams Seamount has yielded Holocene ages, including one age of 3,000 ± 1,000 years before present. Other ages range from 4,000 - 7,000 years before present. Unlike Bounty, Adams Seamount displays no active hydrothermal system.

Biology

Adams seamount features a coral reef, one of the deepest tropical reefs in the world. It is mainly formed by Pocillopora sp. and Porites deformis corals, but also many reef fish and sharks; it is used as a fishing ground by Pitcairn. Adams seamount is part of the Pitcairn Islands Marine Reserve.

References

Sources

References

{{cite gvp
(27 October 2008). "The age and origin of the Pacific islands: a geological overview". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences.
(3 July 2018). "Did or Could Seabirds "Halo" Pitcairn Island for Fletcher Christian?". Terrae Incognitae.
(2019-01-01). "Chapter 34 - The Pitcairn Islands". Academic Press.

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

submarine-volcanoes hotspot-volcanoes seamounts-of-the-pacific-ocean landforms-of-the-pitcairn-islands former-islands-from-the-last-glacial-maximum

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