|
Geology & Geophysics
|
Dr. Thomas Wagner
Program Manager
|
|
G-083-N
|
NSF/OPP Award 01-25922
|
|
Station:
RV/IB Nathaniel B. Palmer
|
|
|
RPSC POC:
Ashley Lowe
|
|
|
Research Site(s):
Off the coast of Seymour Island, Antarctic Peninsula
|
|
Dates in Antarctica:
Mid February to mid April
|
|
|
|
SHALDRIL: A demonstration drilling cruise to the James Ross Basin
|
|
|
Photo not available.
|
|
Deploying Team Members:
|
John B. Anderson
.
Steve Bohaty
.
Matthew Curren
.
Donovan Dums
.
Lindsey Geary
.
David C. Heroy
.
Wesley C., II Ingram
.
Katherine Morse Kirsch
.
Patricia L. Manley
.
Bradley Michalchuk
.
Russell Tyler Smith
.
Mathew S. Sumner
.
Kristy Tramp
.
Fred M. Weaver
.
Julia S. Wellner
.
Sherwood Wise
|
|
Research Objectives:
For over three decades, U.S. scientists and their international colleagues exploring the shallow shelves and seas along the margins of Antarctica have been consistently frustrated by their inability to penetrate through the over-compacted glacial diamictons encountered at shallow subbottom depths (within the upper 10 meters) over these terrains. This is particularly frustrating because advanced high resolution seismic reflection techniques clearly show in many areas the presence of older successions of Neogene and even Paleogene sequences lying just beneath this thin veneer of diamictons. Until the means are developed to recover these sequences, a detailed history of the antarctic ice sheets, which is an essential prerequisite to understanding Cenozoic paleoclimates and future climate change on a global scale, will remain an elusive and unobtainable goal.
After four years of study and evaluation with the aid of a professional engineer (and over the course of two workshops), the SHALDRIL Committee, an interested group of U.S. scientists, has identified at least two diamond coring systems deemed suitable for use on existing ice-breaking U.S. Antarctic Research Program vessels. The project will employ one of these systems (to be determined) on the R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer in order to test and demonstrate the feasibility of both ship-based diamond coring and downhole logging. For this demonstration cruise project team members will core along a high-resolution seismic reflection dip line off Seymour Island in the Antarctic Peninsula, an area of high scientific interest in its own right. Here the well-defined geologic section is estimated to range from Eocene to Quaternary in age, effectively spanning the "Greenhouse-Icehouse" transition in the evolution of antarctic/global climate. A complete record of this transition has yet to be obtained anywhere along the antarctic margin. Researchers expect to be able to correlate the record we obtain with detailed fluctuations of the ice margin recorded at higher latitudes in the eastern Ross Sea by the recently concluded fast-ice-based Cape Roberts Project.
If successful, this mobile and flexible drilling system will then be available to the broader scientific community for further exploration of the present gap that currently exists in technical capabilities to explore the antarctic shelves between the shore-line/fast-ice margin and the continental slope. SHALDRIL will operate effectively in the "no man’s land" that presently exists between the nearshore (where the fast-ice-based Cape Roberts Project was successful) and the upper slope (where ODP’s JOIDES Resolution becomes most efficient). This technological breakthrough will not only allow major outstanding scientific problems of the last three decades to be addressed, but will also favorably impact many current U.S. and SCAR (ICSU Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research) Antarctic or drilling-related initiatives, such as WAIS, ANTIME, ANDRIL, ANTEC, IMAGES, PAGES, GLOCHANT (including PICE), MARGINS, ODP, and STRATAFORM.
|
 |
|
|
