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A region west of the southern East Pacific Rise (SEPR), between the Marquesas and Austral Fracture Zones has previously been found to exhibit anomalous depth-age behavior, based on gridded bathymetry and single-beam soundings. Since gridded bathymetry has been shown to be unsuitable for some geophysical analysis and since the area is characterized by unusually robust volcanism, the magnitude and regional extent of depth anomalies over the young eastern flank of the so called ‘South Pacific Superswell’ are re-examined using a mode-seeking estimation procedure on data obtained from several recent multibeam surveys. The modal technique estimates a representative seafloor depth, based on the assumption that bathymetry from non-edifice and edifice-populated seafloor has a low and a high standard deviation, respectively. Flat seafloor depth values are concentrated in a few bins which correspond to the mode. This method estimates a representative seafloor value even on seafloor for which more than 90% of coverage is dominated by ridge and seamount clusters, where the mean and median estimates may be shallow by hundreds of meters. Where volcanism-related bias is moderate, the mode, mean and median estimates are close. Depth-age results indicate that there is only a small anomaly ( < 200 m) over IS-35 Ma Pacific Plate seafloor with little age-dependent shallowing, suggesting that the lithosphere east of the main hot-spot locations on the ‘superswell’ is normal. An important implication is that, in sparsely surveyed areas, depths from ETOPOJ are significantly different from true depths even at large scales (- 1000 km) and thus are unsuitable for investigations of anomalies associated with depth-age regressions. We find that seafloor slopes on conjugate profiles of the Pacific and Nazca Plates from I5 to 35 Ma are both slightly lower than normal, but are within the global range. Proximate to the SEPR, seafloor slopes are very low (218 m Myr-‘/2) on the Pacific Plate (O-22 Ma) and slightly high (- 410 m Myr- ‘I21 on the Nazca Plate (O-8 Ma); slopes for older Pacific seafloor (22-37 Ma) are near normal (399 m Myr- ‘I’) Seafloor slopes are even lower north of the Marquesas . Fracture Zone but are highly influenced by the Marquesas Swell. We find that the low subsidence rate on young Pacific seafloor cannot be explained by a local hot-spot or a small-scale convective model exclusively and a stretching/thickening model requires implausible crustal thickness variation ( - 30%).

New high-resolution Geosat altimetry data south of 30°S reveal numerous propagating ridge wakes along intermediate- and slow-spreading ridges. These new examples provide a large enough database to establish systematics of ridge propagation. Almost all active propagating ridges propagate down a regional along-axis gravity or bathymetry gradient. The sense of the propagating ridge offset (right lateral vs. left lateral) is related to recent changes in spreading direction. We find there is a significant difference between the propagation of ridges with an axial high morphology which propagate at greater than ∼ 50% of their full-spreading rate and ridges with a median valley morphology which usually propagate at ∼ 25% of their spreading rate. The axial high propagators leave behind an asymmetric wake; the outer pseudofault appears as a continuous linear trough/step while the sheared zone appears as a chain of small gravity bumps. While we clearly see the propagating ridge wakes from offsets greater than ∼ 10 km at slow- and intermediate-spreading ridges, at ridges spreading faster than ∼ 75 mm/yr the amplitude of the wake topography decreases to the point where we no longer see these wakes in Geosat altimetry data. The systematics seen in this new data set support a fracture mechanics model for the dynamics of ridge propagation.

The Australian-Antar ctic discordance zone (AAD) is an anomalously deep and rough segment of the Southeast Indian Ridge between 120 ° and 128°E. A large, negative (deeper than predicted) depth anomaly is centered on the discordance, and a geoid low is evident upon removal of a low-order geoid model and the geoid height-age relation. We investigate two models that may explain these anomalies: a deficiency in ridge-axis magma supply that produces thin oceanic crust (i.e. shallow Airy compensation), and a downwelling and/or cooler mantle beneath the AAD that results in deeper convective-type compensation. To distinguish between these models, we have calculated the ratio of geoid height to topography from the slope of a best line fit by functional analysis (i.e. non-biased linear regression), a method that minimizes both geoid height and topography residuals. Geoid/topography ratios of 2.1 _+ 0.9 m/km for the entire study area (380-60 ° S, 105°-140 ° E), 2.3 _+ 1.8 m/km for a subset comprising crust _< 25 Ma, and 2.7 _+ 2.0 m/km for a smaller area centered on the AAD were obtained. These ratios are significantly larger than predicted for thin oceanic crust (0.4 m/km), and 2.7 m/kin is consistent with downwelling convection beneath young lithosphere. Average compensation depths of 27, 29, and 34 km, respectively, estimated from these ratios suggest a mantle structure that deepens towards the AAD. The deepest compensation (34 km) of the AAD is below the average depth of the base of the young lithosphere (- 30 kin), and a downwelling of asthenospheric material is implied. The observed geoid height-age slope over the discordance is unusually gradual at -0.133 m/m.y. We calculate that an upper mantle 170 °C cooler and 0.02 g/cm 3 denser than normal can explain the shallow slope. Unusually fast shear velocities in the upper 200 km of mantle beneath the discordance, and major-element geochemical trends consistent with small amounts of melting at shallow depths, provide strong evidence for cooler temperatures beneath the AAD.

Using global topographic data and the assumption of Airy isostasy, it is estimated that the crustal volume of the continents is 7182 X 10 to the 6th cu km. The crustal volumes of the oceanic and continental submarine plateaus are calculated at 369 X 10 to the 6th cu km and 242 X 10 to the 6th cu km, respectively. The total continental crustal volume is found to be 7581 X 10 to the 6th cu km, 3.2 percent of which is comprised of continental submarine plateaus on the seafloor. An upper bound on the contintental crust addition rate by the accretion of oceanic plateaus is set at 3.7 cu km/yr. Subduction of continental submarine plateaus with the oceanic lithosphere on a 100 Myr time scale yields an upper bound to the continental crustal subtraction rate of 2.4 cu km/yr.