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Hydrothermal circulation in the oceans is the passage of the water through mid-oceanic ridge systems. The term includes both the circulation of the well-known, high-temperature vent waters near the ridge crests, and the much-lower-temperature, diffuse flow of water through sediments and buried basalts further from the ridge crests. [3]
Hydrothermal fluids contain dissolved minerals that cool and react with seawater and then precipitate as sediment on the surrounding seabed. Hydrothermal vents, in some instances, have led to the formation of exploitable mineral resources via the deposition of seafloor massive sulfide deposits.
Hydrothermal mineral deposits are accumulations of valuable minerals which formed from hot waters circulating in Earth's crust through fractures. They eventually produce metallic -rich fluids concentrated in a selected volume of rock, which become supersaturated and then precipitate ore minerals.
Marine sediment, or ocean sediment, or seafloor sediment, are deposits of insoluble particles that have accumulated on the seafloor.These particles either have their origins in soil and rocks and have been transported from the land to the sea, mainly by rivers but also by dust carried by wind and by the flow of glaciers into the sea, or they are biogenic deposits from marine organisms or from ...
Since these ore deposits frequently form massive sulfide lenses, they are also named sediment-hosted massive sulfide (SHMS) deposits, [1] [4] as opposed to volcanic-hosted massive sulfide (VHMS) deposits. The sedimentary appearance of the thin laminations led to early interpretations that the deposits formed exclusively or mainly by exhalative ...
The hydrothermal vent microbial community includes all unicellular organisms that live and reproduce in a chemically distinct area around hydrothermal vents. These include organisms in the microbial mat , free floating cells, or bacteria in an endosymbiotic relationship with animals.
Hydrothermal circulation is generally considered to be driven via heat in the crust often related to deep-seated gabbro intrusions. Transport of metals occurs via convection of hydrothermal fluids, the heat for this supplied by the magma chamber which sits below the volcanic edifice. Cool ocean water is drawn into the hydrothermal zone and is ...
In general, hydrothermal fluids are characterized by low salinities (up to 12 wt% NaCl equivalent), high H 2 O and CO 2 contents (> 4 mol%), with lesser amounts of CH 4 and N 2 and near-neutral pH. [18] High salinity fluids can result from dehydration of evaporite sequences, containing high Na and Cl concentrations and above mentioned base ...