Axial Base Seafloor (RS03AXBS)

The Axial Base Seafloor site is located near the base of the Axial Seamount at the far western edge of the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate, at ~2,600 meters water deep. The site contains a Medium-Power JBox (MJ03A) and a Low-Power JBox (LJ03A).

Site DOI and Citation Guidance

OOI assigns Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) at the platform or site level. The DOI for the Axial Seamount Base Seafloor is 10.58046/OOI-RS03AXBS.

The minimum recommended citation for this site is:

NSF Ocean Observatories Initiative. (2014). Axial Seamount Base Seafloor, DOI: 10.58046/OOI-RS03AXBS.

This follows the format NSF Ocean Observatories Initiative. (Year Published). Site title, DOI: Site DOI, where Year Published is the year OOI data collection began at the site.

We encourage data users to incorporate full citations when referencing OOI data in order to support FAIR data principles and data traceability. OOI also provides further guidance on citations, including information on adding specific data products and data access points to citations.

Data Access

The following links provide data access via Data Explorer or other methods:

• Direct access to the data on this site and its subcomponents
• General access to OOI data using a variety of methods

Site Description

The Axial Base Seafloor site is located near the base of the Axial Seamount at the far western edge of the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate, at ~2,600 meters water deep. The site contains a Medium-Power JBox (MJ03A) and a Low-Power JBox (LJ03A). Axial Seamount is the largest and most magmatically robust volcano on the Juan de Fuca Ridge. Axial Seamount is far from the continental shelf (>350 km) and represents an open-ocean or pelagic site in the continuum of observing scales represented in the OOI’s Cabled Array. Here, large-scale currents including the North Pacific Current, the subpolar gyre and the northern end of the California Current interact. These currents transport heat, salt, oxygen, and biota, all of which are crucial to the region’s ecosystem. However, their variability arises from forcing as varied as tides and winds to interannual (El Niño) to decadal (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) timescales.

As with other JBoxes, these rests on the seafloor, contain geophysical and near seafloor water column instrumentation, and are attached to a fiber-optic cable. The fiber-optic cable provides the JBoxes with a significant power and 1 Gb communication bandwidth that provides two-way communication to instruments for their operation and transmission of data to shore. This seafloor site is co-located with a Deep and Shallow Profiler Mooring, which collect complementary water column data.

Instruments

This site/platform includes the following instruments. To learn more about an instrument type, select the instrument class-series. To access relevant data streams for an instrument, the instrument code will take you to the OOI Data Portal.