Basalts Dredged from the Northeastern Pacific Ocean
Volcanic rocks dredged from seamounts, fault ridges, and other major geological features of the northeast Pacific Ocean include a wide variety of basalts. Most of these are vesicular, porphyritic types with near analogues in the Hawaiian and other oceanic islands. In addition, aluminous basalts and diabasic theoleiites impoverished in potassium also occur. There is no simple correlation of composition, degree of oxidation, vesiculation, or hydration of these basalts with texture, or depth of dredge site. Most samples appear to have been extruded at much shallower depths than those now pertaining at the dredge site. The distribution of these basalts suggests that the andesite line coincides with or lies on the continent side of the foot of the continental slope.
Dredged Trachyte and Basalt from Kodiak Seamount and the Adjacent Aleutian Trench, Alaska
Blocky fragments of aegirine-augite trachyte (with accompanying icerafted gravels.) were recovered from the upper slopes of Kodiak Seamount in several dredge hauls. An alkali basalt pillow segment was also dredged from a moatlike depression, at a depth of 5000 meters, near the west base of the seamount. These retrievals confirm the volcanic origin of Kodiak Seamount and further support the view of Engel, Engel, and Havens that the higher elevations of seamounts are composed of alkali basalts or related variants.
Archaeological Survey of Dangoyama Kofun by 3DGPR
We presented a three-dimensional ground penetrating radar (3DGPR) system for the archeological investigation in a harsh site, where we have to deal with many trees and/or great topographic variations. This system consists of a commercial GPR system with a laser positioning system. With this system, we can move the GPR antenna freely, on which a positioning detector can record accurate position for each GPR data trace. We applied our 3DGPR system at Dangoyama Kofun, a burial mound, in Fukushima prefecture, Japan. A lot of trees and bushes covered the survey area and cannot be cut. We acquired six datasets in two days in this area. We successfully imaged the boundary between the original surface of the burial mound and the covering soil clearly at about 0.3 m depth around the mound. Furthermore, we found some strong reflections appeared at 0.8 m depth in the top area of the mound, which can be from the artificial parts of the burial mound. The results would greatly aid the following archaeological excavation. In addition, we compared the non-interpolated depth slice with interpolated depth slice at same position and demonstrated that the interpolation process on threedimensional GPR data may introduce some artifacts which might mislead our interpretation.