Drilling in McMurdo Sound

Drilling in McMurdo Sound (Ross Sea) to reconstruct Antarctica's ice-sheet history started in the 1970s. These drillings are multinational projects with participation of scientists from a wide variety of subdisciplines within the Earth Sciences. The major objective of the drillings is to investigate Antarctica's ice-sheet and climate history. The sedimentary rocks that are drilled provide geologists with an archive of past climate conditions. With a surface area of twice the U.S., Antarctica is an essential component of the earth system. The ice sheet cools the Earth, because its white surface reflects solar radiation and cools the ocean. Currently the Antarctic Drilling Program (ANDRILL) is completing two seasons of drilling in 2006 and 2007. The 2006 drilling season recovered a record 1285 m of core, more than our Ocean Drilling Program record of 999 m of the year 2000. See a video made for a New Zealand news magazine at this link: VIDEO ANDRILL. As a graduate student at the Ohio State University, I started out as a foram technician during the 1997 season of the Cape Roberts Drilling project. Another season followed in 1998. In Fall 2007 I will participate as an on-ice sedimentologist in the Southern McMurdo Sound Drilling of the Antarctic Drilling Program, targeting Oligocene and younger strata.

LATEST NEWS Scientists are investigating and sampling the first Cape Roberts core (CRP-1) in the Crary Lab, McMurdo Station, 1997.

Research publications:

Passchier, S., 2000. Soft-sediment deformation features in core from CRP-2/2A, Victoria Land Basin, Antarctica. Terra Antartica, 7(3), 401-412.

Passchier, S., Wilson, T.J. and Paulsen, T.S., 1998. Origin of breccias in the CRP-1 core. Terra Antartica, 5(3), 401-409.

TOPof page

Back to: Antarctic Geoscience at Montclair State University