Jeff Karson

Jeff Karson, from Duke Univeristy is sailing as the Co-Chief Scientist on this cruise. He is a structural geologist interested in how faults and fractures form in the oceanic crust. Fractures develop during earthquakes, but also during slower bending or squeezing of rocks. At the Lost City, like at other hydrothermal vent fields, fractures are necessary to permit fluids to circulate in the rocks of the Earth's crust beneath the field.

My graduate student, Betsy Williams, and I are particularly interested in mapping out the faults and fractures around the Lost City to help figure out what forces caused them in the first place and how they control the "plumbing" system for the vent field. The larger faults will be mapped using ABE but much smaller fractures will be studied from Alvin and in samples we collect.