Paleoceanographic Evolution of the Subantarctic South-East Atlantic: A Site Survey Proposal for the Ocean Drilling Program

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9505528 Froelich This collaborative field program in the sub-Antarctic ocean involves researchers from University of Florida, Georgia Tech, Scripps Institution of the University of California at San Diego and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. The objectives of the research cruise planned for early 1996 are to sample sediments deposited within various water masses of the Antarctic ocean for studies of climatic and oceanographic variations over the past few hundred thousand years. The Antarctic region has a major influence on global oceanography, for it is here that many of the intermediate and bottom waters of the world ocean are formed, and thus the heat and chemical budgets of the ocean are dependent in a number of ways on changes in climate and oceanography here. The record of these variations is recorded in microfossils preserved in the sediments, and this group of investigators will sample sediments from all of the major intermediate and deep water masses of the region. Their research will include faunal, chemical and pore water analysis of the sediments recovered to construct chronologies of change in a large number of parameters throughout the last two or three glacial cycles (as far as their piston cores will reach). In addition, the data they collect will be used to define suitable sites for drilling by JOIDES Resolution in 1997 or 1998 at sites which have been highly ranked as part of the Ocean Drilling Program, the international program for scientific ocean drilling of which NSF is a major sponsor. Though presently considered a high drilling priority, these Antarctic sites do not presently have sufficient site survey information to allow precise hole locations, and this project will provide those necessary geophysical and sedimentological data. ***