Geochemistry of Seafloor Hydrothermal Fluids from the Active Santorini Volcano, Aegean Sea
This Master's project was assigned to Zander Engum St. John Warrington who started the Master's program in Earth sciences, UiB, fall 2025. The Master's project is given by the research group Geochemistry and Geobiology.
Hovedinnhold
Project description
Shallow and intermediate water depth (<500m) seafloor hot springs represent understudied hydrothermal environments in the marine realm of importance to both marine biogeochemical cycles and origin of life research (Price & Giovanelli, 2017; Barge & Price, 2022). In 2024 numerous seafloor hydrothermal vents during exploration around the Greek volcanic island of Santorini were sampled by the U.K.-led RRS Discovery expedition ‘Hydromox’. While CO2-rich liquid gas venting in this area had been observed previously (Carey et al. 2013), little to no corresponding data on the accompanying liquid water phase venting has been reported. Multiple moderate- to low-temperature diffuse and focused fluids were collected by ROV Isis using WHOI-type Ti-syringe ‘Major’ samplers at numerous seafloor locations within the Santorini and Kolumbo calderas, along with accompanying temperature measurements. The aim of this project is therefore to focus on characterizing the geochemistry of these fluids in detail with the objective of delineating the inorganic-organic biogeochemical processes of these hydrothermal ecosystems, within the context of volcano monitoring work carried out as part of the broader Hydromox project network (NOC Southampton, U.K.). Of particular interest are the trace inorganic and organic acid anions (Pereira et al. 2025), with the latter being evaluated for potential microbial organic metabolisms as a function of temperature-pH using geochemical thermodynamic modelling. The project should shed light on the biogeochemical landscapes of Santorini and Kolumbo seafloor ecosystems, and will have implications for both the oceanic and global cycling of elements, such as organic C, that may be highly reactive in shallow-intermediate depth hydrothermal settings.
Proposed course plan during the master's degree (60 ECTS)
GEOV243 H2025 Environmental Geochemistry 10 ECTS
GEOV245 H2025 Geomicrobiology 10 ECTS
GEOV300 H2025 Scientific Writing and Communication in Earth Science 5 ECTS
ZGEOV H2025 Fluid Inclusions 5 ECTS
GEOV342 V2026 The Geochemical Toolbox 10 ECTS
BIO318 V2026 Current Geobiological Topics 10 ECTS
GEO3130 V2026 Geology of Mineral Deposits (UiT, online) 10 ECTS
Field-, lab- and analysis work:
Labwork (H2025-H2026) will involve preparing already collected vent fluid samples for dilution and analyses of anions, cations and trace organics by HPIC (Pereira et al. 2025) and/or ICP-OES, as well as possible modelling of microbial energetics