A new field method for tar quantification was used at Coal Oil Point (COP), California to study the mechanisms transporting oil/tar from the nearby COP natural marine hydrocarbon seep field. This method segregates tar pieces into six size classes and assigns them an average mass based on laboratory or direct field measurements. Tar accumulation on the 19,927m(2) survey area was well resolved sp...

UNLABELLED Marine methane seeps are globally distributed geologic features in which reduced fluids, including methane, are advected upward from the subsurface. As a result of alkalinity generation during sulfate-coupled methane oxidation, authigenic carbonates form slabs, nodules, and extensive pavements. These carbonates shape the landscape within methane seeps, persist long after methane flux...

We report new examples of Cenozoic cold-seep communities from Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad, and Venezuela, and attempt to improve the stratigraphic dating of Cenozoic Caribbean seep communities using strontium isotope stratigraphy. Two seep faunas are distinguished in Barbados: the late Eocene mudstone-hosted 'Joes River fauna' consists mainly of large lucinid bivalves and t...

To determine the seepage parameters of surrounding rock during excavation of tunnels, a program of groundwater seepage (SEEP) was developed. Then finite element models are established in SEEP with the consideration of seepage equations for continuous medium, and the correctness was verified by the comparison of FLAC. Moreover, seepage back analysis program (SBAP) was developed in C++ language b...

Modern and Cenozoic deep-sea hydrothermal-vent and methane-seep communities are dominated by large tubeworms, bivalves and gastropods. In contrast, many Early Cretaceous seep communities were dominated by the largest Mesozoic rhynchonellid brachiopod, the dimerelloid Peregrinella, the paleoecologic and evolutionary traits of which are still poorly understood. We investigated the nature of Pereg...

Vesicomyidae clams harbor sulfide-oxidizing endosymbionts and are typical members of cold seep communities where active venting of fluids and gases takes place. We investigated the central biogeochemical processes that supported a vesicomyid clam colony as part of a locally restricted seep community in the Japan Trench at 5346 m water depth, one of the deepest seep settings studied to date. An ...

We sampled the Darwin mud volcano (MV) for meiofaunal community and 14 trophic structure in relation to pore-water geochemistry along a 10-m transect from a seep 15 site on the rim of the crater towards the MV slope. Pore-water profiles indicated 16 considerable variation in upward methane (CH4) flow among sediment cores taken along the 17 transect, with highest flux in the seep sediment core, ...

Riparian zones with extensive groundwater seeps may allow short-circuiting of groundwater to stream channels and modify groundwater contact with shallow organic soil layers in riparian areas. The controls on dissolved organic carbon (DOC) export to an Appalachian headwater stream were examined at Baldwin Creek (southwestern Pennsylvania), where baseflow is derived from multiple surface seeps. D...

Cold seep communities with distinctive chemoautotrophic fauna occur where hydrocarbon-rich fluids escape from the seabed. We describe community composition, population densities, spatial extent, and within-region variability of epifaunal communities at methane-rich cold seep sites on the Hikurangi Margin, New Zealand. Using data from towed camera transects, we match observations to information ...

Upon their initial discovery, hydrothermal vents and methane seeps were considered to be related but distinct ecosystems, with different distributions, geomorphology, temperatures, geochemical properties and mostly different species. However, subsequently discovered vents and seep systems have blurred this distinction. Here, we report on a composite, hydrothermal seep ecosystem at a subducting ...