• RR40 simo at sea1
  • RR40 at sea2
  • Spectrogram of a recent large earthquake in Pakistan, recorded by ocean-bottom seismometer RR09
  • RR40 simo at sea2
  • RR40 simo at sea3
  • RR19 at sea
  • RR19 in view
  • Meteor in Port Louis, Mauritius, Oct 2013
  • Recovery-01
  • Mauritius Panorama2
  • RR12 night recovery
  • RR04 bandeau 2
  • First OBS recovery, Oct 23, 2013
  • MeteorSunSet-01
  • OBS RR22 crane
  • OBS RR21 arriving
  • RR40 simo at sea
  • Leaving Port Louis, Mauritius, Oct 23, 2013
  • OBS RR21 floating
  • OBS RR21 Ondeck
  • RR40 at sea
  • RR04 bandeau 1
  • RR31
  • French OBS RR40 at sea, 20 nov 2013
  • French OBS RR40 in contact with the Meteor, 20 nov 2013
  • Spectrogram of a recent large earthquake in Pakistan, recorded by ocean-bottom seismometer RR09
  • Sismometer RR40 at sea, 20 nov 2013
  • Sismometer RR40 at sea, 20 nov 2013
  • OBS RR19 close to the Meteor, Oct 30, 2013
  • OBS RR19 in view! Oct 30, 2013
  • Meteor in Port Louis, Mauritius, Oct 2013
  • Recovering OBS RR19 at night, Oct 30, 2013
  • Mauritius lanscapes, Oct 23, 2013
  • Night recovery of the OBS RR12, Oct 26, 2013
  • RR04 from below, nov 4, 2013
  • First OBS recovery, Oct 23, 2013
  • OBS RR22 pulled by the Meteor crane, Nov 1st, 2013
  • OBS RR21 arriving on the Meteor, Oct 31, 2013
  • Sismo of the french OBS RR40 at sea, 20 nov 2013
  • Leaving Port Louis, Mauritius, Oct 23, 2013
  • OBS RR21 at sea, Oct 31, 2013
  • OBS RR21 On Meteor deck, Oct 31, 2013
  • French OBS RR40 at sea, 20 nov 2013
  • RR04 from below, nov 4, 2013
  • The French INSU OBS RR31 recovered, Nov 15, 2013

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

Written by Karin Sigloch on . Posted in Project

SWIR light

The 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) have been  deployed in 2012 over an area of 2000 km x 2000 km2 centered on La Réunion Island, using the “Marion Dufresne” and they will be recovered in 2013 by the “Meteor” vessel. The one-year OBS deployment (Oct. 2012 – Oct. 2013) is 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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