• 032 SAM 0720
  • 052 SAM 1299
  • 050 SAM 1134 - Version 2
  • 010 SAM 0911 - Version 2
  • 036 SAM 1108 - Version 2
  • 060 SAM 0668
  • The last OBS drawing
  • 034 SAM 0722
  • 030 SAM 1650 - Version 2
  • Marion dufresne drawing
  • 020 IMGP5464 - Version 2
  • Deploying a German ocean-bottom seismometer.
  • Deploying a French ocean-bottom seismometer.
  • The Marion Dufresne in the Glorieuses Islands, îles Eparses in April 2011.
  • Technical discussion over a French ocean-bottom seismometer.
  • The research target: La Réunion and what lies underneath.
  • Deploying a German ocean-bottom seismometer.
  • The Marion Dufresne steaming past Mauritius, October 2012.
  • Ceremony for the 57th and last OBS (drawing by Pierre Henry, 22 Oct 2012).
  • Deploying a German ocean-bottom seismometer.
  • Our seismic station on the tiny coral atoll of Tromelin.
  • Deploying a German ocean-bottom seismometer.
  • Installing a seismometer on Tromelin - îles Eparses, April 2011
  • Marion Dufresne in the port of La Réunion, waiting for the dock worker strike to end (Pierre Henry, 23 Sept. 2012).
  • Installing a seismological station on Europa - îles Eparses, April 2011.
  • Buoys for 57 ocean-bottom seismometers.
  • The Marion Dufresne in Glorieuses, îles Eparses in April 2011.

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RHUM-RUM investigates La Réunion mantle plume from crust to core

Written by Karin Sigloch on . Posted in Project

SWIR lightThe volcano island of La Réunion is one of the strongest candidates worldwide for a hotspot underlain by a deep, "classical" mantle plume.

RHUM-RUM (Réunion Hotspot and Upper Mantle - Réunions Unterer Mantel) is a French-German passive seismic experiment designed to image an oceanic mantle plume – or lack of plume – from crust to core beneath La Réunion Island, and to understand these results in terms of material, heat flow and plume dynamics. La Réunion hotspot is one of the most active volcanoes in the world, and its hotspot track leads unambiguously to the Deccan Traps of India, one of the largest flood basalt provinces on Earth, which erupted 65 Ma ago. The genesis and the origin at depth of the mantle upwelling and of the hotspot are still very controversial. 

In the RHUM-RUM project, 57 German and French ocean-bottom seismometers (OBS) are deployed over an area of 2000 km x 2000 km2 centered on La Réunion Island, using the “Marion Dufresne” and “Meteor” vessels. The one-year OBS deployment (Oct. 2012 – Oct. 2013) will be augmented by terrestrial deployments in the Iles Eparses in the Mozambique Channel, in Madagascar, Seychelles, Mauritius, Rodrigues and La Réunion islands. A significant number of OBS will be also distributed along the Central and South West Indian Ridges to image the lower-mantle beneath the hotspot, but also to provide independent opportunity for the study of these slow to ultra-slow ridges and of possible plume-ridge interactions.

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