Project Details
Projekt
HADALquake - Exploring impacts of seismic driven mass wasting’s for hadal life and element cycling: Conditions pre and post the recent earthquakes in the Kermadec and Tonga Trench systems
Subject Area
Oceanography
Term
since 2026
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 564897924
Benthic life is largely driven by the supply of food and energy from the ocean surface and generally tends to decline with increasing water depth. However, recent findings have shown that depocenters with enhanced biological and biogeochemical activity occur in the deepest part of the ocean – the hadal realm. The activity levels are generally linked to the surface ocean production, but the linkage appears to be modulated by a number of factors. This includes complex bathymetry mediating variations in down slope material transport, hydrographic processes that focus or winnow deposition but presumably material transport during mass-wasting events triggered by seismic activity are key for defining life and element cycling at the deepest end of the ocean continuum. We will test this hypothesis by taking advantage of a unique opportunity. We will compare a comprehensive pre-quake dataset, collected in 2017, in one of the most prominent hadal trenches underlying an oligotrophic surface ocean - the Kermadec Trench - to data to be collected after major earthquake events in 2020 & 2021. We will explore how catastrophic mass wasting affect hadal life including microbes, meio- and macrofauna and how such events affect carbon Cruise proposal HADALquake - ID: GPF 22-1/030 5 of 5 and nitrogen cycling in the deep sea. Resent findings have documented extreme habitat variability within trench systems. To explore, intratrench as well as inter-trench variabilities we will compare conditions and processes at sites in the Kermadec Trench to the nearby Tonga Trench system. Ultimately the findings will be compared to findings acquired by the team in other trench systems underlying varying productivity regimes (SO261 and SO293 that targeted the Atacama and Kuril-Kamchatka/Aleutian Trench systems). All together the insights will markedly expand current knowledge on biodiversity and biogeochemical function of the hadal realm and enable their inclusion in current understanding of the biological and biogeochemical function of the global ocean.
DFG Programme
Infrastructure Priority Programmes
Subproject of
SPP 2520:
Infrastructure area - Research Vessels
International Connection
Denmark
Cooperation Partner
Professor Dr. Ronnie Glud
