The sediments accumulating on and around mid-ocean ridges are mostly formed from the calcareous and siliceous tests of pelagic organisms. This research is concerned with understanding how the rate of sediment supply varies from place to place due to varied productivity of pelagic organisms, how the sediments accumulate on the complex topography of a mid-ocean ridge, and with using the sediments to study mid-ocean ridge processes such as faulting and volcanism.
Sediment transport and accumulation
When pelagic materials reach the seafloor, they are redistributed by bottom currents and by sedimentary flows. This work studied the form of the accumulation using sediment profiler records collected with a Deep Tow system from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography deployed over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in the early 1970s. The records showed that both sets of transport processes are important. The shapes of deposits were studied to see to what extent they conform to the diffusion transport model - many deposits have parabolic surfaces, which are the steady state forms expected from the diffusion transport model under boundary conditions of constant input or output flux to basins.
Reduction is a chemical reaction in which electrons are gained by one of the atoms taking part in the reaction and lowering of an oxidation state of that atom.
Reduction takes place at the cathode.
In aqueous, vanadium(V) is present in +5 oxidation state which on reduction changes to vanadium(I) with +1 oxidation state.
