Aquatic life makes up the majority of life on Earth. More than 70% of the surface of the Earth is covered by our oceans. It is clear how important these marine settings are to the globe and how much still needs to be discovered about them. This curiosity is only going to increase, as a recent discovery suggests that our planet may contain more than 19,000 undersea volcanoes.
Scientists now have the most complete list of seamounts ever generated because of the discovery made by the high-definition radar satellites.
A deeper comprehension of ocean currents, plate tectonics, and climate change may be possible thanks to the new compendium, which was released on April 6 in the journal Earth and Space Science.
"We used the latest vertical gravity gradient maps to update and refine a global seamount catalogue, finding 19,325 new seamounts. Smaller seamounts (2,500 m tall) with good bathymetry coverage (739) were modelled with a radially symmetric Gaussian function. Two modelling approaches show that smaller seamounts have a sigma to height ratio of 2.4, which agrees with an earlier study by Smith (1988)," write the authors of the study.
What are seamounts?
The ocean floor consists of primary tectonic features that form at spreading ridges, including abyssal hills, transform faults, and propagating ridges, as well as volcanic seamounts that form in a variety of off-ridge settings.
Seamounts are active or extinct volcanoes with heights that reach at least 1,000 m (Menard, 1964), although this definition has been broadened to include much smaller isolated volcanoes (Staudigel et al., 2010).
They are basaltic in composition, volcanic in origin, and formed in one of three tectonic settings: near mid-ocean ridges, intraplate hotspots, or island arcs (Wessel, 2007).
