A new volcanic province: an inventory of subglacial volcanoes in West Antarctica

• DOI: 10.1144/sp461.7
• Publication Date: 2017-05-30T00:10:28Z
• Authors: Maximillian van W...; Robert G. Bingham; Andrew S. Hein
• Keywords: 13. Climate action; 15. Life on land

Abstract The West Antarctic Ice Sheet overlies the Rift System about which, due to comprehensive ice cover, we have only limited and sporadic knowledge of volcanic activity its extent. Improving our understanding subglacial across province is important both for helping constrain how volcanism rifting may influenced ice-sheet growth decay over previous glacial cycles, in light concerns whether enhanced geothermal heat fluxes melting contribute instability Sheet. Here, use bed-elevation data locate individual conical edifices protruding upwards into Antarctica, propose that these represent volcanoes. We used aeromagnetic, aerogravity, satellite imagery databases confirmed volcanoes support this interpretation. overall result presented here constitutes a first inventory Antarctica's volcanism. identified 138 volcanoes, 91 which not previously been identified, are widely distributed throughout deep basins but especially concentrated orientated along >3000 km central axis System.