The Eastern Pacific Ocean and Hawaii

Home , Tanya Atwater, Western North America

THE EASTERN PACIFIC OCEAN AND HAWAII

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Frontispiece 1: Sea floor photos illustrating types of hydrothermal vents; photos taken during the 1979 RISE expedition to the East Pacific Rise at 21°N (Spiess and others, 1980). See Haymon, this volume (A) "Galapagos-style" vent, characterized by warm fluids (up to ~20°C) oozing out of crevices in basalt, surrounded by clams and tube worms. Vestimentiferan worms in the foreground are approximately 1.5 m in length (photo taken by F. N. Spiess). (B) "White smoker" vent, emitting milky fluids with temperatures less than 300°C from sulfate-sulfide-silicate edifices encrusted with the white tubes of polychaete worms. The smaller edifice at center is approximately 1 m in height (photo taken by I. Juteau). (C) "Black smoker" vent, discharging 380 + 30°C fluids at a high flow rate through a sulfide- sulfate chimney, and precipitating black, fine-grained sulfide mineral particles within the rising plume; a white smoker is shown to the left of the black smoker, and an inactive edifice is on the right. The original height of the black smoker was several meters, but the chimney was knocked over during sampling; the base of the chimney shown in this photo is approximately 1 m in height (photo taken by D. Foster).

Downloaded from http://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/books/book/chapter-pdf/3733735/9780813754659_frontmatter.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 Frontispiece 2: Color shaded-relief map of digital SeaBeam data from Galapagos 95.5°W propagating rift system, illuminated from the northeast from an elevation of 15°. The oblique structures in the zone of transferred lithosphere are clearly evident. From Hey and others (1986), see Hey and others (this volume).

Front cover: Excerpt from unpublished map Relief of the surface of the Earth, prepared by P. W. Sloss, National Geophysical Data Center (NOAA), Boulder, Colorado 80303-3328.

Downloaded from http://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/books/book/chapter-pdf/3733735/9780813754659_frontmatter.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 The Geology of North America Volume N

The Eastern Pacific Ocean and Hawaii

Edited by

E. L. Winterer Scripps Institution of Oceanography La Jolla, California 92093

Donald M. Hussong University of Hawaii Department of Geology and Geophysics Honolulu, Hawaii 96822

Robert W. Decker 4087 Silver Bar Road Mariposa, California 95338

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Publication of this volume, one of the synthesis volumes of The Decade of North American Geology Project series, has been made possible by members and friends of The Geological Society of America, corporations, and government agencies through contributions to the Decade of North American Geology fund of the Geological Society of America Foundation. Following is a list of individuals, corporations, and government agencies giving and/or pledging more than $50,000 in support of the DNAG Project:

Amoco Production Company Pennzoil Exploration and ARCO Exploration Company Production Company Chevron Corporation Phillips Petroleum Company Cities Service Oil and Gas Company Shell Oil Company Diamond Shamrock Exploration Caswell Silver Corporation Standard Oil Production Company Exxon Production Research Company Sun Exploration and Production Company Getty Oil Company Superior Oil Company Gulf Oil Exploration and Production Tenneco Oil Company Company Texaco, Inc. Paul V. Hoovler Union Oil Company of California Kennecott Minerals Company Union Pacific Corporation and Kerr McGee Corporation its operating companies: Marathon Oil Company Union Pacific Resources Company Maxus Energy Corporation Union Pacific Railroad Company Upland Industries Corporation McMoRan Oil and Gas Company U.S. Department of Energy Mobil Oil Corporation Occidental Petroleum Corporation

© 1989 The Geological Society of America, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data All rights reserved. The Eastern Pacific Ocean and Hawaii / edited by E. L. Winterer, Donald M. Hussong, Robert W. Decker. All materials subject to this copyright and included p. cm.—(The Geology of North America ; v. N) in this volume may be photocopied for the noncommercial Bibliography: p. purpose of scientific or educational advancement. Includes index. ISBN 0-8137-5208-6 Copyright is not claimed on any material prepared 1. Submarine geology—Pacific Ocean. 2. Geology—Hawaii. by government employees within the scope of their 3. Geological Society of America. I. Winterer, Edward L. employment. II. Hussong, Donald M. III. Decker, Robert W. (Robert Wayne), 1927- IV. Series. Published by The Geological Society of America, Inc. QE71.G48 1986, vol. N 3300 Penrose Place, P.O. Box 9140, Boulder, Colorado 80301 [QE350.4] 557 s—dc20 Printed in U.S.A. [551,46'084421 ] 89-35702 CIP

10 98765432

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Preface xi

Foreword xiii

1. Introduction 1 E. L. Winterer

2. Large-scale undersea features of the northeast Pacific 5 Jacqueline Mammerickx

3. Tectonic maps of the northeast Pacific 15 Tanya Atwater and Jeff Severinghaus

4. Plate tectonic history of the northeast Pacific and western North America 21 Tanya Atwater

5. Evolution in plate tectonics; The Juan de Fuca Ridge 73 H. Paul Johnson and Mark L. Holmes

6. Tectonic and magmatic processes on the East Pacific rise 93 Ken C. Macdonald

7. Transforms of the eastern central Pacific Ill Paul J. Fox and David G. Gallo

8. Hydrothermal processes and products on the Galapagos Rift and East Pacific Rise 125 Rachel M. Haymon

9. Petrology and geochemistry of eastern Pacific spreading centers 145 Rodey Batiza

10. Propagating rifts and spreading centers 161 R. N. Hey, J. M. Sinton, and F. K. Duennebier

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11. Failed rifts 177 Rodey Batiza

12. The Hawaiian-Emperor Chain 187 D. A. Clague, G. B. Dalrymple, T. L. Wright, F. W. Klein, R. Y. Koyanagi, R. W. Decker, and D. M. Thomas

13. Seamounts and seamount chains of the eastern Pacific 289 Rodey Batiza

14. Sediment thickness map of the Northeast Pacific 307 E. L. Winterer

15. The late Cenozoic stratigraphie record and hiatuses of the northeast Pacific; Results from the Deep Sea Drilling Project 311 John A. Barron

16. The pelagic clay province of the North Pacific Ocean 323 Margaret Leinen

17. Hydrogenous sediment 337 D. Z. Piper and G. R. Heath

18. Sedimentation and paleoceanography of the central equatorial Pacific 347 F. Theyer, E. Vincent, and L. A. Mayer

19. Major submarine fans of the California continental rise 373 William R. Normark and Christina E. Gutmacher

20. Continental margins around the Gulf of Alaska 383 Roland von Huene

21. Queen Charlotte Islands margin 403 Robin Riddihough and Roy D. Hyndman

22. Plate tectonic evolution of the Cascades arc-subduction complex 413 Robert A. Duncan and La Verne D. Kulm

23. Evolution of the off shore central California margin 439 David S. McCulloch

24. The California Continental Borderland 471 D. S. Gorsline and L. S.-Y. Teng

25. Neogene plate-tectonic evolution of the Baja California Sur continental margin and the southern Gulf of California, Mexico 489 Jon E. Spencer and William R. Normark

26. Geology and tectonic history of the Gulf of Calif ornia 499 Peter Lonsdale

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27. The Middle America Trench off southern Mexico 523 Joel S. Watkins

28. The middle America convergent plate boundary, Guatemala 535 Roland von Huene

Index 551

Plates (in accompanying slipcase)

Plate 1A-C. Bathymetry of the Northeast Pacific Ocean J. Mammerickx

Plate 2A-C. Surface-sediment composition of the Northeast Pacific C. J. Moore

Plate 3A-C. Tectonic map of the Northeast Pacific Ocean T. Atwater and J. Severinghaus

Plate 4. Bathymetry of the East Pacific Rise K. C. Macdonald

Plate 5. Geologic map of the State of Hawaii R. W. Decker

Plate 6. Section across the Middle America convergent margin off Guatemala R. Von Huene

The Geology of North America series has been prepared to mark the Centennial of The Geological Society of America. It represents the cooperative efforts of more than 1,000 individuals from academia, state and federal agencies of many countries, and industry to prepare syntheses that are as current and authoritative as possible about the geology of the North American continent and adjacent oceanic regions. This series is part of the Decade of North American Geology (DNAG) Project which also includes eight wall maps at a scale of 1:5,000,000 that summarize the geology, tectonics, magnetic and gravity anomaly patterns, regional stress fields, thermal aspects, seismicity, and neotectonics of North America and its surroundings. Together, the synthesis volumes and maps are the first coordinated effort to integrate all available knowledge about the geology and geophysics of a crustal plate on a regional scale. The products of the DNAG Project present the state of knowledge of the geology and geophysics of North America in the 1980s, and they point the way toward work to be done in the decades ahead. In addition to the contributions from organizations and individuals acknowledged at the front of this book, major support has been provided to one of editors (ELW) of this volume by Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

A. R. Palmer General Editor for the volumes published by The Geological Society of America

J. O. Wheeler General Editor for the volumes published by the Geological Survey of Canada

Since the appearance of Menard's Marine Geology of the Pacific 25 years ago, there has been a veritable explosion of knowledge about the northeast Pacific. During these years, the major features of the magnetic anomaly pattern have been mapped, and can be interpreted in the framework of plate tectonics; an extensive web of seismic reflection lines and cores from a network of about 150 deep sea drill holes provide the data and samples for dating, correlating, and interpreting the oceanic sedimentary cover, the constitution of the oceanic crust, and the tectonics of the continental margins; new swath-mapping techniques and near-bottom obser- vations and sampling using deep-towed instruments and manned submersibles have opened a window into the processes of crustal accretion and hydrothermal activity along active spreading centers; and modern instrumentation has provided a rich new data base for interpretations of active volcanism in Hawaii. It was therefore clear that the planned DNAG Series on the Geology of North America would be a proper vehicle to attempt a new overview of the marine geology of the northeast Pacific and of the interactions between the ocean basin and the North American continent. It was Allison R. (Pete) Palmer who started the machinery that eventually led to this DNAG volume. As general editor for the DNAG series, he participated in the conception of the volume as a logical part of the series, and then recruited the three co-editors. It was only with his patient and persistent help that the volume was carried through all the steps to final publication. We began by developing a general set of goals and a tentative outline, which became a chapter in DNAG Special Publication 1, Perspectives in regional geological synthesis. Palmer, assisted by Jean Davis from GSA headquarters, then arranged a preliminary workshop in Palo Alto, California, to which we invited about two dozen experts and potential chapter authors. With Perspectives... as a starting point, long discussions at the workshop led gradually to a consensus on the general topical content and areal scope of the volume, which was then translated into a preliminary listing of chapters and the identification of responsible authors, some of whom were not there to defend themselves. A second, final workshop met about 15 months later in Palo Alto to review and coordinate chapter outlines prepared by authors after the first meeting. In fact, considerable revision in the basic structure of the book occurred at the second workshop. It had become increasingly apparent, for example, that as the DNAG Cordilleran volume began to take shape, the continental margins were in danger of being overlooked, and we therefore sought to ensure that the Northeast Pacific volume would include a systematic, sector-by-sector account of the geology of the Pacific margins of North America, with as few gaps as possible. It was our goal as editors of this volume to present an overview of the geology of the oceanic region west of North America, but we had to set some areal limits. We were clearly obligated to deal with the interactions between the North American continent and the adja-

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cent ocean, but we recognized that their tectonic linkage has been mainly across convergent and transform-fault plate boundaries. We decided that the areal coverage of the volume should therefore extend far enough west to include regions of the Pacific plate formed in Paleogene and Mesozoic times. The record of plate motions and reorganizations preserved on older parts of the Pacific plate are a powerful entrée into the problem of reconstructing the motions of now-vanished plates that interacted with North America. Because a chapter on the Hawaiian Island chain was to be an essential and integral part of the volume, we decided to extend our coverage of the ocean basin westward to include the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain. The southern boundary was set at the Equator, so as to include not only the margins of Central America, but also the Galapagos spreading ridge and the important mass of biogenous pelagic sediment in the equatorial region southeast of Hawaii. The editing tasks were divided up amongst the three of us as follows: Hussong watched over the ocean basin geophysical, petrologie, and tectonic chapters; Winterer looked after the continental margin and sedimentary chapters; and Decker put together the long chapter on Hawaii. To the extent feasible, working with normal, independent-minded scientists who are volunteering their labors, we have tried to encourage balanced interpretations of controversial topics, and to keep the chapters at the level of succinct reviews, written for a reader at, say, the level of a first-year earth science graduate student. At the same time, many authors spent considerable energies in synthesizing previously unpublished data, in order to make their chapters as up-to-date as possible. We have not attempted to bring conflicting interpretations from different authors into harmony; where there is controversy we have let it stand. Future work and new data may resolve the controversies, or bring even different hypotheses to the fore. All the work in writing chapters for this volume was from volunteers, who gave freely of their expertise, experience, time, and energies. A very large proportion of marine geologists and geophysicists work in the soft-money environment, where everything, including salaries, must be paid from research grants and contracts. Many authors therefore spent their own precious time in preparing their chapters, and the editors are indebted to all of them, not only for their chapter contributions, but for their readiness to make the revisions suggested by reviewers and editors. It was Pete Palmer who encouraged, cajoled, hounded, and even shamed various authors and editors to write and revise within deadlines. He was not always completely successful, but his determination and good humor never failed. The chapters in this volume each received critical review by at least two anonymous reviewers nominated by one of the co-editors. Pete Palmer read everything, and found ways to be helpful with almost every chapter. For their efforts to assist authors to improve their chapters and thus to improve the volume, we are grateful to all the reviewers. In looking back at the outline in Perspectives ... it is plain that some topics we had hoped to include in the book are missing, mainly because the logical authors had other commitments that ruled out their participation in this enterprise. On the other hand, some of the chapters turned out to be much more comprehensive than we originally envisioned. The field is open for other efforts at synthesis of this astonishingly diverse region.

Edward L. Winterer, La Jolla, California Donald M. Hussong, Honolulu, Hawaii Robert W. Decker, Mariposa, California

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