Prof. Anthony B. Watts

The main focus of my research has been to use geological and geophysical techniques to study the Earth's crust and upper mantle beneath the world's ocean basins and their margins. The world’s ocean basins and their margins cover some 71% of the Earth’s surface area. Their significance is that they provide a unique insight into the geological, geophysical and geochemical cycles that link the solid Earth with the oceans and atmosphere. They also have some of the world’s thickest sediment accumulations and are one its last frontiers for oil and gas exploration. Seismic, swath bathymetry, gravity and magnetic data acquired onboard research ships help constrain the processes that are occurring on the ocean floor as well as the structure and evolution of its most prominent topographic features such as ocean islands and seamounts, mid-ocean ridges, deep-sea trenches, and continental margins. We describe here some of these data, their geological interpretation, and implications for basin evolution, oceanic crust and mantle structure, isostasy and flexure of the lithosphere and sea-level change.