MAPRIDGES: Global Database of Mid-Oceanic Ridges Segments and Transform Faults

The precise location and geometry of oceanic spreading centers and associated transform faults and discontinuities boundaries has fundamental implications in our understanding of oceanic accretion, the accommodation of deformation around rigid lithospheric blocs, and the distribution of magmatic and volcanic processes. The now widely used location of mid oceanic ridges worldwide, published by P. Bird in 2003, can be updated based on recent publicly available and published ship-based multibeam swath bathymetry data (100-m resolution or better), now available to ~25% of the ocean seafloor, but covering a significant proportion of the mid-ocean ridge system (>70%). Here we publish the MAPRIDGES database built under the coordination of CGMW (Commission for the Geological Map of the World), with a second version (03/2026) that provides high resolution and up-to-date datasets of mid-ocean ridge segments and associated transform faults, and follow-up updates that will also include non-transform offsets. The detailed mapping of individual mid oceanic ridge segments was conducted using GMRT (Ryan et al., 2009) (version 4.2 and 4.3 for MAPRIDGES V2.0), other publicly available datasets (e.g., NCEI, Pangaea, AWI), and existing literature (including published maps). MAPRIDGES will be revised with the acquisition of additional datasets, new publications, and correction of any errors in the database. The MAPRIDGE database was built in a GIS environment (QGIS), where each feature has several attributes specific to the dataset. We include 4 different shapefile layers: 1) Ridge Segments, 2) Transform Faults, 3) Transform Zones. The latest corresponds to zones of distributed strike-slip deformation that lack a well-defined fault localizing strain, but that are often treated as transform faults. We also include a continuous ridge boundary for the different ridge systems, linking adjacent ridge segments. Files are provided in the GeoPackage (.gpkg) format that is non-propietary, open, and platform-independent. To facilitate revisions and updates of the database, relevant information, corrections, or data could be sent to B. Sautter ([e-mail]) and J. Escartín ([e-mail]).