High resolution seismic investigations of the south-western Baltic sea: A seismic pre-site survey for the IODP-Proposal 'Paleo-environmental evolution of the Baltic Sea Basin through the last glacial cycle'

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The Baltic Sea Basin (BSB) is one of the world¿s largest intra-continental basins. BSB has served as depositional sink throughout its geological history and accumulated sediments comprise a unique high-resolution paleoenvironmental archive where the history of the drainage area and the basin itself is preserved. The IODP Pre-Proposal 672-Pre `Paleoenvironmental evolution of the Baltic Sea Basin through the last glacial cycle¿ mainly aims in investigating the climatic development during the past interglacial-glacial cycle, with emphasis on the last interglacial, the Eemian, and its transition into the Weichselian. The Science Steering and Evaluation Panel regards the Baltic Sea basin interglacial record as a very exciting drilling target but also points out that it is necessary to demonstrate with seismic data that most expanded and least disturbed locations for drilling has been chosen. To provide these data in sufficient quality and to provide an interpretational framework is the main objective of this application. Data were collected around five suggested IODP drilling sites in the Kattegat and the southern Baltic Sea during a seismic presite-survey onboard RV Heincke from 06.02.06-16.02.06. Due to the shallow water depth and the required high resolution, data were recorded with a combination of an especially designed 50 m 48 channel shallow water streamer and a 300 m 48 channel conventional streamer. First analyses of the newly acquired data indicate the three of the surveyed areas are very promising locations for the recovery of a complete composite sedimentary sequence covering the last glacial cycle, which needs to be confirmed by detailed processing and interpretation of the data.