Pore-water concentration of chloride in sediment cores and equilibrium temperatures and gas bubble analysis at ROV stations from the Vodyanitskii mud volcano

Vodyanitskii mud volcano is located at a depth of about 2070 m in the Sorokin Trough, Black sea. It is a 500-m wide and 20-m high cone surrounded by a depression, which is typical of many mud volcanoes in the Black Sea. 75 kHz sidescan sonar show different generations of mud flows that include mud breccia, authigenic carbonates, and gas hydrates that were sampled by gravity coring. The fluids that flow through or erupt with the mud are enriched in chloride (up to 650 mmol L**-1 at 150-cm sediment depth) suggesting a deep source, which is similar to the fluids of the close-by Dvurechenskii mud volcano. Direct observation with the remotely operated vehicle Quest revealed gas bubbles emanating at two distinct sites at the crest of the mud volcano, which confirms earlier observations of bubble-induced hydroacoustic anomalies in echosounder records. The sediments at the main bubble emission site show a thermal anomaly with temperatures at 60 cm sediment depth that were 0.9 °C warmer than the bottom water. Chemical and isotopic analyses of the emanated gas revealed that it consisted primarily of methane (99.8%) and was of microbial origin (dD-CH4 = -170.8 per mil (SMOW), d13C-CH4 = -61.0 per mil (V-PDB), d13C-C2H6 = -44.0 per mil (V-PDB)). The gas flux was estimated using the video observations of the ROV. Assuming that the flux is constant with time, about 0.9 ± 0.5 x 10**6 mol of methane is released every year. This value is of the same order-of-magnitude as reported fluxes of dissolved methane released with pore water at other mud volcanoes. This suggests that bubble emanation is a significant pathway transporting methane from the sediments into the water column.

Paradigm shift in determining Neoproterozoic atmospheric oxygen

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank the Geological Survey of Australia for permission to sample the Empress 1A and Lancer 1 cores, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada for financial support (grant #7961–15) of U. Brand, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China for support of F. Meng and P. Ni (grants 41473039 and 4151101015). We thank M. Lozon (Brock University) for drafting and constructing the figures. We thank the editor, Brendan Murphy, as well as three reviewers (Steve Kesler, Erik Sperling, and an anonymous reviewer), for improving the manuscript into its final form ©The Authors Gold Open Access: This paper is published under the terms of the CC-BY license.

Basin-scale architecture of deeply emplaced sill complexes : Jameson Land, East Greenland

We would like to thank reviewers Steffi Burchadt and Simon Passey for the considerate and careful reviews which improved this paper. Funding for data collection in study was provided from the research council of Norway through the PETROMAKS project 193059 and the Force Safari project. Funding for data analysis was provided from PETROMAKS through the Trias North project (234152). Dougal Jerram is partly supported by research council of Norway Centres of Excellence funding (223272, CEED). The data were acquired by Julien Vallet and Samuel Pitiot of Helimap Systems. Simon Buckley is acknowledged for help with data processing, and Gijs Henstra and Björn Nyberg for assistance in the field. Aka Lynge and Arild Andresen are thanked for logistical support

Lasting mantle scars lead to perennial plate tectonics

R.N.P. and P.J.H. are grateful for funding from an NSERC Discovery Grant. Computations were performed on the GPC supercomputer at the SciNet HPC Consortium. SciNet is funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation under the auspices of Compute Canada, the Government of Ontario, Ontario Research Fund—Research Excellence and the University of Toronto. Numerical calculations were done using a modified version of the SOPALE (2000) software. The SOPALE modelling code was originally developed by Philippe Fullsack at Dalhousie University with Chris Beaumont and his Geodynamics group.

Comparison of threshold hydrologic response across northern catchments

Funded by Leverhulme Trust. Grant Number: F/00 152/AG

Recognition and importance of amalgamated sandy meander belts in the continental rock record

Date of Acceptance: 27/05/2015

Crustal-scale shear zones and heterogeneous structure beneath the North Anatolian Fault Zone, Turkey, revealed by a high-density seismometer array

Peer reviewed

New constraints on micro-seismicity and stress state in the western part of the North Anatolian Fault Zone : Observations from a dense seismic array

Major funding was provided by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) under grant NE/I028017/1 and partially supported by Boğaziçi University Research Fund (BAP) under grant 6922. We would like to thank all the project members from the University of Leeds, Boğaziçi University, Kandilli Observatory, Aberdeen University and Sakarya University. I would also like to thank Prof. Ali Pinar and Dr. Kıvanç Kekovalı for their valuable comments. Some of the figures were generated by GMT software (Wessel and Smith, 1995).

3-D reflection seismic imaging of the Hontomin structure in the Basque-Cantabrian Basin (Spain)

Peer reviewed

The response of lake margin sedimentary systems to climatically driven lake level fluctuations : Middle Devonian, Orcadian Basin, Scotland

Peer reviewed

Enhanced microbial activity in carbon-rich pillow lavas, Ordovician, Great Britain and Ireland

Date of acceptance: 09/07/2015

The Palaeoproterozoic global carbon cycle : insights from the Loch Maree Group, NW Scotland

Fieldwork was supported by the Edinburgh Geological Society Clough & Mykura Fund, the Carnegie Undergraduate Scholarship and a stipend provided by the Irvine Bequest through the University of St Andrews to G.B.K. Laboratory work, and isotope and geochronology analyses were financed by NERC grant NE/G00398X/1 to A.R.P., A.E.F., D.J.Condon and A.P.M. Thanks go to T. Donnelly, J. Dougans, A. Calder, D. Herd, B. Pooley and A. Mackie for laboratory assistance.

Gondwana break-up related magmatism in the Falkland Islands

Peer reviewed

3.46 Ga Apex chert 'microfossils' reinterpreted as mineral artefacts produced during phyllosilicate exfoliation

We acknowledge the facilities, scientific and technical assistance of the Australian Microscopy & Microanalysis Research Facility at: Centre for Microscopy Characterisation and Analysis, The University of Western Australia; Electron Microscopy Unit, The University of New South Wales. These facilities are funded by the Universities, State and Commonwealth Governments. DW was funded by the European Commission and the Australian Research Council (FT140100321). This is ARC CCFS paper number XXX. We acknowledge Martin van Kranendonk, Owen Green, Cris Stoakes, Nicola McLoughlin, the late John Lindsay and the Geological Survey of Western Australia for fieldwork assistance, Thomas Becker for assistance with Raman microspectroscopy, Anthony Burgess from FEI for the preparation of one of the TEM wafers, and Russell Garwood, Tom Davies, Imran Rahman & Stephan Lautenschlager for training and advice on the SPIERS and AVIZO software suites. We thank Chris Fedo and an anonymous reviewer for comments that improved the manuscript.

3D Attenuation Tomography of the Volcanic Island of Tenerife (Canary Islands)

Peer reviewed