This week I welcome Dr. Ed Kohut as a guest blogger here on Eruptions (while I am off in the Sierras doing some field work). I've known Ed for 10 years now - we were both graduate students in igneous petrology at Oregon State University - and we are both Massachusetts natives. Ed was in the Coast Guard before getting degrees at University of Rhode Island and Boston University before heading of to Oregon State for a Ph.D., where he worked on melt inclusions in minerals. One of his major research areas is magmatism in the Mariana Islands and he was nice enough to put together a look at the Marianas for Eruptions - this is Part 1. Enjoy!
------ Big thanks to Erik for inviting me to post a bit on the Marianas. I have been working in the Marianas since 2001 and I have to extend gratitude to Sherm Bloomer at OSU and Bob Stern at UTDallas for not only getting my involved to begin with, but also for keeping me involved. I hope to show that there is a lot more to the Marianas than just the trench.
What, Where If you look at a map or a globe, you will see many long chains of nearly regularly spaced islands, particularly in the Pacific. Some of the chains are curved to form an arc shape, and are the origin of the term island arc. Since these islands are largely volcanic, they are also the source of the geologic term "volcanic arc". These arcs are the volcanic expression of subduction zones (more on that later). The Western Pacific is home to several of these arcs, including the Marianas.
