NEOMA, Maldives December, 2007 Meteor Cruise: Carbonate Margin Miocene-Pliocene Evolution, Complimentary Site Survey for IODP-514-Full5

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Because of Droxler's past and current research involvement in the Maldives, he has been invited by chief scientist Prof. Christian Betzler (University of Hamburg, Germany) to participate on a December 2007 18 days-long research cruise NEOMA on the R/V Meteor M74/4 in the Maldives Inner Sea. This sea going expedition is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG Foundation). Funds are for Droxler (1) to participate at the December 2007 research cruise on the R/V Meteor, and (2) to develop a post cruise Rice research program including a graduate student. The research cruise is part of a German research program NEOMA. During the 18 days of the NEOMA sea going operations, bathymetric (swath mapping) and seismic surveys (Parasound digital echo sounder and multi-channels high resolution seismics with GI gun as acoustic sources) will be acquired and gravity and piston cores retrieved in the northern part of the Maldives Inner Sea. One of the goals of the R/V Meteor cruise is to gather additional site survey data for the IODP proposal 514-Full5 Fluctuations in the Inner Sea of the Maldives Archipelago: an Intra-Oceanic Carbonate System for which Droxler is the lead Proponent with several co-proponents from Germany/Netherlands (Betzler, C.G., Reijmer, J.J.G., Gischler, E.) who will be directly involved in the December 07 R/V Meteor cruise. The proposed 514-Full5 drilling program is developed to address unanswered, challenging, and essential questions on the timing and amplitude of the Oligocene and Neogene sea level fluctuations and complement well the results of past ODP and future IODP research programs across the New Jersey siliciclastic shelf margin, the scheduled IODP leg in the Canterbury Basin, Leg 166 across the western margin of Great Bahama Bank, and Leg 194 drilling on the Marion Plateau (Northeast Australia). Some of the data collected during the December 2007 R/V Meteor cruise will be valuable complementary site survey data to the existing industry seismic data sets, already submitted to the IODP Data Bank. In parallel to acquiring the necessary site survey data, a goal is to compile enough seismic data to test and compare the details of the Oligocene-Neogene sequence stratigraphic pattern signature. The PIs will analyze a series of cores to complement the analyses that were done at Site 716, in particular to understand the late Brunhes interglacial glacial cycles in the deep surroundings of modern atolls and, if recovered, to focus on the mid-Brunhes transition, clearly observed in several other carbonate and mixed carbonate margins such as the Bahamas, Belize, the Florida Keys, and the Gulf of Papua.Broader Impacts involve graduate and undergraduate student participation in the cruise and post-cruise research and connection to a proposed IODP expedition.