Maarten de Moor:

Graduate Student

University of New Mexico

My name is Maarten de Moor. I grew up in South Africa, but have lived and studied in the United States for the last six years. I was inspired to follow a path in volcanology after I visited the island of Montserrat in 1999 and experienced the presence of the explosively active Soufriere Hills volcano. For my undergraduate honors thesis I researched the magmatic evolution of an active volcanic system in northern Patagonia, called Volcan Copahue. I also spent time on the Big Island of Hawaii studying Kilauea volcano. Now I am a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, working with Dr. Tobias Fischer on volatile cycling through the Mariana Arc.

I will focus on how nitrogen is introduced to the magma source region through the subduction of ocean sediments, and how it is recycled back to the surface by gas emissions from volcanoes. The plan is to take gas samples and measure the sulfur dioxide flux from every volcano on the Mariana arc. From these data we will calculate the total amount of nitrogen emitted from the arc and compare that to the amount of nitrogen in the subducted sediments. We are testing the hypothesis that nitrogen is recycled efficiently through subduction zones. If this hypothesis is correct then the amount of nitrogen coming out of the arc should be the same as the amount going in. On the other hand, nitrogen might be entrained in the subducted slab into the deep mantle. If this is the case, then there will be less nitrogen emitted from the arc than the amount that is subducted.