Continental Drilling in the East African Rift Lakes: A Strategic Planning Workshop

这笔赠款支持一个研讨会，为东非裂谷湖的大陆科学钻探制定战略计划。目标是汇集古气候学、古人类学、气候建模、古海洋学、科学钻井作业、裂谷盆地构造学、火山学和地层学等领域的专家，以确定和优先考虑这些不同学科的关键科学目标，并在成本/效益框架内将这些目标与具体的、优先的湖泊钻井目标联系起来。在马拉维湖成功的科学钻探作业之后，古气候和地球物理学社区开展了大量的活动，提供了必要的现场调查和背景数据，可以在东非的几个湖泊进行钻探，包括坦噶尼喀湖、艾伯特湖、维多利亚湖和图尔卡纳湖。这些进展为新的钻探项目奠定了基础，从世界上最好的上新世-更新世热带古气候的湖泊档案中开发出长时间、定量、高分辨率的记录。每个湖泊提供的时间分辨率和连续性非常不同，因此对非洲环境史的了解也不同。每个钻井目标的成本和技术挑战也大不相同。未来的湖泊钻探计划必须考虑如何最大限度地补充正在进行的计划，利用近海海洋沉积物和洞穴主题以及古湖泊钻探计划来产生新的非洲古环境记录。考虑到东非裂谷湖科学钻探的巨大科学机会，我们建议需要一个研讨会，通过对每个钻探目标的技术挑战和科学成果的成本/效益分析，确定如何最好地进行。知识价值：东非裂谷湖包含了从上新世到更新世跨越数十个纬度的无与伦比的气候和环境历史记录，其分辨率和连续性可与深海沉积物和冰芯相媲美。这些湖泊的科学钻探结果将直接满足几个重点领域的需求，包括对过去地质时期生命、生态、环境和生物地理变化方面的调查，以及对地球深时间（全新世前）气候系统复杂性的理解。研讨会将确定介于古气候学、古人类学和构造学之间的新研究领域，促进跨学科研究，并补充国家科学基金会大陆动力学和人类起源项目的关键目标。此外，我们的研讨会将为东非上新世-更新世沉积和古环境研究制定研究重点，促进该地区未来的科学研究。该计划将在研讨会报告中公布，并将为向ICDP和NSF提交完整的钻井建议奠定基础。更广泛的影响：研讨会将促进来自不同学科的专家之间更广泛的合作，包括古气候、古人类学和裂谷盆地构造物理学，促进真正跨学科的湖泊科学钻探模式。该研讨会还为美国、欧洲和非洲科学家之间的国际合作提供了机会，其中许多科学家也是女性或早期职业科学家。拟议的研讨会参与者名单反映了建立不同国际背景和传统上在科学领域代表性不足的群体参与的愿望。

This grant supports a workshop to develop a strategic plan for continental scientific drilling in the East African Rift Lakes. The objectives are to bring together experts in the fields of paleoclimatology, paleoanthropology, climate modeling, paleoceanography, scientific drilling operations, rift basin tectonics, volcanology, and stratigraphy, in order to define and prioritize key scientific goals of these diverse disciplines, and to link these goals to specific, prioritized lake drilling targets within a cost/benefit framework. Following the successful scientific drilling operations in Lake Malawi, there has been an enormous level of activity within the paleoclimate and geophysics communities that has provided necessary site survey and background data that could lead to drilling in several of the East African lakes, including Lakes Tanganyika, Albert, Victoria, and Turkana. These developments have set the stage for new drilling projects to develop long, quantitative, highly resolved records from some of the world's best lacustrine archives of Plio-Pleistocene tropical paleoclimate. Each lake would provide very different temporal resolution and continuity and thus different insights into African environmental history. Each drilling target also would have very different costs and technical challenges. Future lake drilling programs must consider how to maximally complement ongoing initiatives to generate new African paleoenvironmental records using offshore marine sediments and speleothems and drilling initiatives in paleolakes. Given the enormous scientific opportunities for scientific drilling in the East African rift lakes, we propose that a workshop is needed to determine how best to proceed, through a cost/benefit analysis of the technical challenges and scientific outcomes of each drilling target.Intellectual Merit: The East African rift lakes contain an unparalleled record of climatic and environmental history through the Plio-Pleistocene spanning tens of degrees of latitude, with resolution and continuity comparable to deep-sea sediments and ice cores. Results from scientific drilling in these lakes will directly meet several key areas of emphasis, including investigations of the changing aspects of life, ecology, environments, and biogeography in past geologic time and understanding the complexities of Earth's deep time (pre-Holocene) climate systems. The workshop will identify new research areas that lie between paleoclimatology, paleoanthropology, and tectonics, fostering transdisciplinary research and complementing the key goals of the NSF Continental Dynamics and Human Origins programs. In addition, our workshop will develop research priorities for sedimentary and paleoenvironmental studies of the Plio-Pleistocene in East Africa, promoting future scientific investigations in this region. This plan will published in a workshop report, and will set the stage for full drilling proposals to ICDP and NSF.Broader Impacts: The workshop will foster broader collaborations among specialists from varied disciplines, including paleoclimate, paleoanthropology, and rift basin tectonophysics, promoting a truly interdisciplinary model for scientific drilling in lakes. The workshop also offers opportunities for international collaborations between American, European, and African scientists, many of whom are also women or early career scientists. The proposed workshop participant list reflects the desire to build participation from diverse international backgrounds and groups traditionally underrepresented in sciences.