32 Recent Advances in the Gulf of California Oblique Rift: Offshore and Onshore Studies // Avances Recientes en el Rift Oblicuo del Golfo de California: Estudios Marinos y Terrestres (Part II)

This session highlights recent research on the Gulf of California–Salton Trough plate boundary from ~12 Ma to today. We welcome terrestrial and marine studies involving tectonics, basin analysis, volcanology, sedimentology, and more. English or Spanish.

Friday, 24 April 2026
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
LMH, Fiesta Terrace Salon

Thermal Evolution of the Ringvent Hydrothermal System from Intrusion to Present

Paper number: 32-1
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 8:20 AM – 8:40 AM

Authors

Abstract

Ringvent is an off-axis, sill-driven hydrothermal system located in the Guaymas Basin, Gulf of California. In the subsurface, it is characterized by a layered stratigraphy disrupted by a funnel-shaped intrusion that sustains the currently observed fluid-flow activity and promotes secondary chemical reactions that modify the host sediments. During IODP Expedition 385, a comprehensive set of geological, geophysical, and geochemical data was acquired, including heat-flow measurements, thermal and petrophysical properties, fluid geochemistry, and drill-core samples. These data provide sufficient information to perform a detailed characterization of the present system and its temporal evolution (Teske et al., 2019; Galerne et al., 2025). Although Ringvent has been extensively studied from geological, geophysical, and biological perspectives, one of the most critical parameters remains insufficiently constrained: heat. Several key questions related to the present state of the system remain unresolved, including (i) the age of the intrusion, (ii) the volume and geometry of the intrusive body, and (iii) the present-day temperature distribution. Additional questions derived from the cooling history include (iv) the temperature dependence of porosity distribution, (v) early interactions between hydrothermal fluids and the intrusion, and (vi) the evolution of the fluid-flow field during cooling. In this contribution, we present a numerical modeling approach to address these questions. Based on conservation principles, we develop a three-dimensional thermo-hydraulic model that explores the thermal evolution of the intrusion Additional dependencies are also examined, including the influence of intrusive geometry on cooling patterns and the dependence of thermal relaxation times on host-rock composition. This approach provides a framework to better constrain the thermal evolution of sill-driven hydrothermal systems such as Ringvent.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 58, No. 3

doi: 10.1130/abs/2026CD-410819

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