Resolution Guyot

Resolution Guyot is a guyot in the underwater Mid-Pacific Mountains in the Pacific Ocean. It is a circular flat mountain, rising 500 metres above the seafloor to a depth of about 1,320 metres. The guyot was probably formed by a hotspot in today’s French Polynesia before plate tectonics shifted it to its present-day location.

About Resolution Guyot in brief

Resolution Guyot is a guyot in the underwater Mid-Pacific Mountains in the Pacific Ocean. It is a circular flat mountain, rising 500 metres above the seafloor to a depth of about 1,320 metres. The guyot was probably formed by a hotspot in today’s French Polynesia before plate tectonics shifted it to its present-day location. Other guyots are Sio South, Darwin, Thomas, Heezen, Allen, Caprina, Jacqueline and Allison. Unlike conventional Pacific Ocean island chains, the Mid- Pacific Mountains are a group of oceanic plateaus with guyots that become progressively younger towards the east. The seamount is about 500 metres high and is capped off by a 35 kilometres wide rather flat and roughly circular summit platform with a 25 metres high rim and a moat inside of this rim. Resolution Guyot was informally known as Huevo Guyot before it was renamed after the drilling ship JOIDES Resolution during Leg 143 of the Ocean Drilling Program in 1992. It may be as much as 154 million years old and rises from a seafl floor of Jurassic age ) that might be up to 1,300 metres deep. The formation of many seamounts has been explained by the theory, which suggests that the chains of volcanoes become progressively older along the length of the chain, with only one volcano at the end of the system producing a volcano on the lithosphere. Sometimes the volcano is moved away from the source of heat as it is heated from the plate, producing a chain of volcanic activity that ceases as the plate shifts away from it.

The Pacific Ocean seafl Floor contains many guyots formed during the Mesozoic age ) in unusually shallow seas. While there are some differences to present- day reef systems, many of these seamsounts were formerly atolls, which still exist. Fringing reefs may have developed on the volcanoes, which then became barrier reefs as the volcano subsided and turned into an atoll, and which surround a lagoon or a tidal flat. Continued subsidence of the reefs led to the formation of thick carbonate platforms atoll-like structure, where the platforms rose above sea level during episodes of erosional features such as blue holes and blue holes. The platform emerged above sealevel at some time between the Albian and Turonian ages before eventually drowning for reasons unknown between theAlbian and the Maastrichtian. The surface of the platform consists of limestone that is partially covered by pelagic sediments; underwater cameras have shown the presence of rock slabs covered by ferromanganese crusts. After a hiatus, sedimentation commenced on the seamount and led to deposition of manganese crust and pelagicsediments, some of which were later modified by phosphate. At one site there is a terrace about 200 metres wide, surmounted by a 25 metre high cliff. Thermal subsidence lowered the drowned seamount to its current depth.

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