Global Seamount Database

As part of my study of intraplate volcanism I identified the global population of intraplate volcanic seamounts using the ERS-1/Geosat gridded vertical gravity gradient. This analysis resulted in 11882 unique seamounts distributed among the various tectonic plates.


Availability of Global Seamount Database

Download Global_Seamounts_JGR2001_revised.txt

NOTE: The original table was found to contain several duplicate seamounts on plates other than Pacific, Indian, and Africa, as pointed out to me by Karen Stocks, Scripps. The revised seamount table, with 11882 unique entries, is the one linked above. For the record, here are the original 2001 ASCII Seamount table or Excel Seamount table; these show 15,675 seamounts and therefore contain duplicates. Our 2010 Oceanography publication uses the revised data set.


References:

The seamount database resulted from work described in these publications:
  1. Wessel, P., Sandwell, D.T. and Kim, S.-S., 2010, The global seamount census, Oceanography, 23(1), 24-33.
  2. Wessel, P., 2001, Global distribution of seamounts inferred from gridded Geosat/ERS-1 altimetry, J. Geophys. Res., 106(B9), 19,431-19,441.
  3. Wessel, P., and S. Lyons, 1997, Distribution of large Pacific seamounts from Geosat/ERS-1: Implications for the history of intraplate volcanism, J. Geophys. Res., 102,22,459-22,475.
  4. Wessel, P., 1997, Sizes and ages of seamounts using remote sensing: Implications for intraplate volcanism, Science, 277, 802-805.

Last update April 15, 2010 by Paul Wessel