Exploring earth's ancient sedimentary record for long-lost oceanic plateaus opens a new frontier in understanding volcanic phenomena and their impact on the Earth's surface. Discovering that such plateaus existed during a time for which we know almost nothing about Earth’s oceans would provide a new glimpse into our planet’s history, and the links between its deep interior and the surface environment inhabited by life.
Massive volcanic eruptions
Let’s take a step back. Many extinctions and oceanic anoxic events through Earth’s history (when oxygen levels in seawater severely fell around the world) apparently coincided with massive volcanic activity far larger than anything humans have witnessed. With lava flows sometimes covering areas the size of the Netherlands. Some of these eruptions formed huge rock plateaus in the oceans between 120 and 90 million years ago, causing repeated falls in seawater oxygen levels during a series of oceanic anoxic events, as well as triggering climate warming and seawater acidification.
Less studied ocean plateaus
‘’But because these plateaus formed in the oceans, only small parts of them are preserved above the sea surface, so they are less studied or understood than similar huge volcanic events that occurred on land’’, Percival explains. ‘’An even bigger question is whether similar plateaus existed earlier in earth’s history. Almost no ocean crust survives from before around 200 million years ago, so we know very little about any plateaus that existed before that time, their size, or their impact on the global carbon cycle, climate and marine environment.”
SEA-VOLC study
Percival and his team will use the chemical composition of sedimentary records of anoxic events to pin down exactly how these volcanic plateaus impacted Earth’s surface, starting with the best known examples from 120–90 million years ago. Simultaneously, the team will explore sedimentary records of severe carbon-cycle disruption from further back in our planet’s history, some of which appear to have been similar to oceanic anoxic events, for evidence of submarine volcanism that would support the existence of older, now long-lost, oceanic plateaus.
About Lawrence Percival
Percival’s interest in the links between oceanic plateaus and Earth’s environment goes back more than 10 years to his time as a PhD student at the University of Oxford in the UK, where he researched potential markers of volcanic activity in records of anoxic events and mass extinctions. Following postdoctoral research positions at Université de Lausanne in Switzerland and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium, he arrived at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam as an assistant professor in October 2023, where his work on the links between massive volcanic events, Earth’s carbon cycle, and the history of changing climates and environments on our planet continues through projects such as SEA-VOLC.
About the Starting Grant
The ERC provides Starting Grants to support talented early career scientists to carry out ground breaking projects for a period of five years. 494 early career researchers have been awarded ERC Starting Grants.