Memorandum 13
Submission from the UK-Integrated Ocean
Drilling Program Steering Committee
UK MEMBERSHIP AND PARTICIPATION IN THE INTEGRATED
OCEAN DRILLING PROGRAM
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. This submission highlights the importance
of continued UK membership of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program
(IODP), an essential marine infrastructural resource for the wider
UK ocean and Earth science community. Scientific ocean drilling
is the marine equivalent of the "Hubble Telescope" and
is one of the most successful major international collaborations
in the history of science. IODP is the only mechanism available
for accessing the continuous sedimentary records essential for
understanding past changes in the Earth's climate and how climate
is maintained. The research on the cores recovered by the drilling
and experiments and observations in the drill holes are also important
for understanding the tectonic processes that shape the surface
of the Earth and give rise to the major seismic and volcanic geohazards
that threaten billions of the global population.
2. To ensure that the UK receives the greatest
return from its subscription, and that science questions of greatest
relevance to the UK are targeted by the IODP, it is imperative
that appropriate enabling resources be available, preferably at
levels equivalent to the investments made by comparable economies
(eg, Germany, USA). Such funds are necessary for UK scientists
to direct campaigns for ocean drilling, undertake the highest
quality post-cruise research on the samples recovered, and to
train the next generation of physical and biological scientists
in environmental fields of increasing societal relevance.
SCIENTIFIC BACKGROUND
3. The oceans regulate climate, cover the
formative features of plate tectonics and preserve a high-resolution
archive of the last 180 Ma of Earth history including its climatic
evolution. Analysis of marine rock and sediment cores recovered
by scientific ocean drilling has been central to most of the important
advances in understanding of our planet's dynamic and inter-related
systems with far reaching implications for the Earth and environmental
sciences. UK scientists initiated and lead many of the fields
in which ocean drilling provides the main platform for furthering
our understanding of the Earth system.
4. Key among these are:
(a) The verification of Plate Tectonics—the
primary Earth cycle that shapes our planet, and controls the location
and occurrence of earthquakes, volcanoes, critical metal and hydrocarbon
resources, and geohazards.
(b) Development of the field of Palaeoceanography,
where through the analysis of layers of ocean sediments, we are
able to understand and reconstruct past climate, patterns of ocean
circulation and chemical, physical and biological responses to
changing environmental conditions.
(c) Demonstration of orbital forcing of climate
caused by subtle but predictable changes in the Earth's spin and
rotation around the Sun.
(d) The rapidity and severity of past climate
change.
(e) The variation of past oceanic circulation
patterns.
(f) The recognition of climate extremes in
past Earth history particularly during periods of high atmospheric
CO2 that are useful for better understanding future climate scenarios.
(g) The significance of "black smokers"
and how hydrothermal exchanges between the solid Earth and the
oceans provide a major control on global geochemical cycles.
(h) The discovery and dynamic nature of gas
hydrates and their roles as resources, geohazards and possible
agents for rapid climate change.
(i) Fluid flow associated with active faults.
(j) The formation of the ocean crust at the
mid-ocean ridges—a process that has resurfaced more than
60% of our planet over the past 200 million years.
(k) Discovery of the deep biosphere, hitherto
unknown microbial life forms that live deep within ocean sediments,
at the temperature and chemical extremes of the life envelope.
These previously unsuspected communities have the potential to
answer questions about the origin of life on our planet and are
possible sources of new organic compounds of great interest to
the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.
5. Drilling and resulting research have
shown how sensitive the surficial environment is to solid Earth
processes, biogeochemical interactions and a whole series of internal
feedbacks. However, we have yet to gain a sufficient knowledge
of the underlying physics to identify the driving mechanisms,
the dominant feedbacks and the relationships between mass fluxes,
chemical states, physical states, and biological communities.
As a consequence, the Earth and environmental sciences are now
poised to make fundamental advances in understanding critical
Earth processes. These include topics of immediate environmental
concern to mankind, processes that control the location of vital
natural resources, as well as the governing dynamics of our planet.
6. Experience has shown that many of the
oceanographic records essential to understanding the Earth system
can only be recovered by scientific ocean drilling. However, the
construction and operating costs for drill ships and other coring
platforms are beyond the means of individual nations and this
has lead to more than 30 years of successful international scientific
collaboration initiated by the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP,
1968-83) and the recently completed Ocean Drilling Program (ODP,
1985-2003). The new Integrated Ocean Drilling Program[14]
(IODP, 2003-13) represents a major expansion for scientific ocean
drilling both in the scope and sophistication of the technology
and in the breadth and structure of the international collaboration
involved in running the program. The fundamental purpose of the
IODP is to drill into the seabed to collect samples and carry
out experiments to further scientific research on the Earth, its
evolution and environment. The new technologies available through
the IODP now make it possible to recover drill cores from nearly
all marine environments from very shallow to deep water, from
open ocean to ice-covered polar latitudes, in regions of significant
gas hazard or instability and from great depths (up to 7,000 m).
KEY OBJECTIVES
OF IODP
7. The major science areas identified by
the Initial Science Plan of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program[15]
are:
Environmental Change, Processes and Effects;
The Deep Biosphere and Sub-seafloor Ocean;
Solid Earth Cycles and Geodynamics.
8. There is growing recognition within the
UK of the importance of the problems of rapid climate change and
the sensitivity of Earth's climate to a number of interdependent
atmospheric, oceanic and solid Earth processes.
However, our knowledge of the processes and
consequences of climate change and the computer modelling essential
to predict future climate remain under development. IODP will
provide the required spatial coverage of high resolution records
of climate proxies capable of resolving the leads and lags and
hence causality in patterns of change (eg, in particular levels
of CO2 and global temperatures).
Critical among these will be the nature and
relative timing of changing oceanic circulation patterns, changes
in sealevel, and the role of bio-geochemistry. Other first-order
environmental concerns which require study by deep ocean drilling
are the stability of the vast deposits of methane stored as solid
gas hydrates in sediments and processes in seismogenic zones of
collisional crustal plate boundaries. Over 1 billion people and
key elements of the global economy are in close proximity to subduction
zones that have been the loci of all known great tsunamogenic
earthquakes (eg, Boxing Day, 2004 Sumatran quake and other historic
earthquakes greater than 8.5 magnitude on Richter Scale). By drilling
and installing monitoring and sensor arrays within these zones
we will better understand the mechanisms of stress build-up and
release in these systems perhaps leading to the identification
of precursor warning signs of large, destructive events.
9. Deep sea drilling also provides the direct
sampling and in-situ borehole experiments essential to
investigate a whole series of fundamental geodynamic, geochemical
and biological processes on Earth. Drilling is the only satisfactory
way to investigate ocean ridges where determination of flow of
melt in the mantle and solid-earth—ocean geochemical exchanges
have proved difficult to quantify. The installation of seismometers
in ocean boreholes will provide the global coverage essential
to exploit computational advances in 3D seismic imaging of the
Earth. The ability to site instruments in the oceanic sub-surface
will also make an important contribution to planned sea floor
observatories for monitoring key environmental parameters. Problems
as fundamental and diverse as generation of Earth's magnetic field
by the core and mechanisms of lithospheric deformation, require
high resolution sedimentary records, only recoverable by deep
ocean drilling, to provide the critical time-series information
necessary for their solution. The discovery of a huge and previously
unknown microbial biomass active in deep sediments has implications
that span a whole-range of Earth science topics including evolutionary
biology, formation of oil and gas, global geochemical fluxes and
climate.
UK MEMBERSHIP OF
THE INTEGRATED
OCEAN DRILLING
PROGRAM (IODP) AND
THE SIGNIFICANCE
TO UK SCIENCE
10. Participation in IODP allows UK scientists
to influence the science planning and benefit directly from more
than $1.5 billion investment in drilling platforms and their operation
by the USA, Japan and Europe. UK scientific engagement in the
IODP is enabled through membership of the European Consortium
for Ocean Research Drilling (ECORD) comprising 16 European nations
plus Canada. ECORD is a partner in IODP alongside the US National
Science Foundation (NSF) and the Japanese Ministry of Education,
Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Science is prioritised
in the IODP through the peer-review of proposals to tackle specific
science questions. This proposal system is open to all researchers
be they from universities, industry or government institutions.
IODP then co-ordinates the deployment of a spectrum of drilling
platforms for the recovery of sediments, other rock-types and
fluids from all marine environments.
11. Technological developments since the
final cruises of the Ocean Drilling Program (2003) include the
construction of a riser drill ship by Japan, and use of mission-specific
platforms that provide completely new capabilities for scientific
ocean drilling by UK-IODP's European consortium. Of particular
benefit to the UK is the use of mission specific platforms that
enable sampling of previously inaccessible targets such as shallow
water (coral reefs), or polar regions. Improvements in riserless
drilling will allow good recovery of fractured hard rocks for
the first time. Riser drilling with circulating drilling mud will
allow drilling in poorly consolidated and over-pressured rocks,
areas of hydrocarbon hazard and deep holes. Also important are
developments in borehole technology that allow separation and
sampling of different formation fluids, making proper sub-seafloor
hydrological investigations possible. The technological developments
in deep ocean drilling coincident with oil exploration in ever
deeper and more difficult water has lead to growing and beneficial
collaboration with industry both nationally and internationally
(eg, the UK-IODP Industrial Liaison Panel[16]).
12. Participation in previous drilling programmes
has given UK scientists influence over drilling strategy far in
excess of the UK financial input. At a point where we face urgent
problems in the prediction and mitigation of climate change the
UK must maintain its involvement in an international programme
which will provide information on a whole range of critical Earth
Science processes. Assessment and prediction of the environmental
impact of our technologies and the coupled problems of finding
and exploiting natural resources will be the major challenges
faced by society over the 21st century. The results of deep sea
drilling provide key information to enhance our ability to tackle
these problems. UK involvement is essential if the UK is to continue
its influential role in the international environmental debate
such as implementation of climate change mitigation (eg, Kyoto
Protocol).
13. Involvement in IODP will also be critical
to the development of emerging research areas. Prime among these
is biogeochemistry because we now recognise that biological processes
control many of the feedbacks which maintain oceanic and atmospheric
chemistry and we use biologically moderated element and isotope
ratios in fossils, as well as organic molecules, as the key proxies
for the past physical and chemical states of the oceans. The UK
has an enviable research record at the forefront of the biological
sciences and UK scientists lead in the discovery and investigation
of the deep biosphere, in the development of proxies for palaeoceanography,
and in the identification of the key phytoplankton that export
carbon from the ocean surface. A high proportion of new appointments
at UK Earth and Environmental Science departments have research
interests which relate to biogeochemistry and participation in
IODP will be necessary for this investment in people to realise
its full potential.
14. IODP topics of immediate importance
to UK science include:
(a) ocean climate dynamics;
(b) ocean biogeochemistry and the carbon
cycle;
(c) Arctic ocean: control on climate and
ocean circulation;
(e) gas hydrates: stability, dynamics and
potential consequences;
(f) magnetic field and the geodynamo;
(g) oceanic seismic arrays and oceanic sub-surface
observatories; and
(h) ocean Ridge processes: mantle melt flow,
crustal construction and hydrothermal fluxes.
15. IODP drilling will make fundamental
contributions to other important areas of Earth sciences research
that both involve UK scientists and impact UK science through
the complex interdependence of Earth systems. Most significant
will be research on the seismogenic zone at subduction zones,
but drilling will also put important constraints on the processes
of extensional and compressional continental deformation, on large
igneous provinces and their potentially catastrophic environmental
impacts, asteroid impact sites such as the Chicxulub crater at
the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary, and oceanic mass wasting events
on ocean islands or the continental shelves that can be responsible
for major tsunamis.
16. The IODP, when it reaches full capabilities
in 2007, will be able to carry out drilling to depths of six or
seven kilometres below the seabed in nearly all of the ocean basins
and in most geological environments. To do this it will mount
three types of expeditions:
(a) Non-riser drilling by the refurbished
US drill ship, the JOIDES Resolution,[17]
scheduled to resume drilling in late 2007.
(b) Riser drilling using the new Japanese
ship, the Chikyu,[18]
scheduled to begin operations in late 2007.
(c) Mission-specific platform expeditions
mounted to access otherwise inaccessible locations by ECORD.[19]
17. The NERC UK-IODP Directed Science programme
makes these essential IODP facilities available to the UK community
through its subscription to ECORD (~US$5.9M/yr). The UK played
a major role in the establishment of the ECORD consortium of 16
European countries and Canada. Science support is currently provided
through an enabling programme (£3.5 million for 2004-08)
that funds UK scientists' involvement in drilling expeditions,
their participation in the IODP and ECORD science peer review
committees, liaison with industry and the attendance and organisation
of IODP-related conferences and workshops. New to this enabling
support programme is the ability to fund marine site surveys.
Such surveys are mandatory for the development of a successful
drilling proposal, as detailed knowledge of the sub-seafloor targets,
usually from remote geophysical observations such as multi-channel
seismic reflection surveying, are critical to the safety and success
of the drilling expeditions. UK scientists are engaged within
IODP through the development of drilling proposals as well as
through research on the drill cores recovered, at an intensity
that far exceeds (~4 times) the UK's financial contribution to
the international programme. The regular submission of successful
drilling proposals by UK scientists allows them to guide the IODP
to undertake projects of the greatest relevance to UK environmental
science priorities and to deliver on key government research areas
including ocean climate dynamics, rapid climate change, extreme,
climates, biogeochemistry and the carbon cycle, gas hydrates,
and geohazards.
SUCCESSES OF
PHASE I OF
THE IODP (2003-06)
18. Drilling expeditions in the first phase
of the IODP (2003 to 2006) are providing information for research
into (1) mechanisms of rapid climate change, particularly in the
North Atlantic and the Arctic, (2) a very high resolution record
of sealevel and climate change since the last glacial period,
(3) movement of fluids through sediments, the associated sub-seafloor
biosphere and gas hydrates, and (4) the mechanisms of lithosphere
formation and the drivers of ocean-hydrosphere geochemical fluxes.
Spectacular drilling successes of the initial phase of IODP include:
(a) the mission-specific expedition to the
Arctic, which made the first deep research drilling in the Arctic
basin and has revealed the magnitude of Arctic climate change
and sea ice evolution over the last 50 Ma;
(b) the first deep hole in intact oceanic
crust to reach lower crustal gabbros which will provide information
on the inter-related magmatic and hydrothermal processes that
govern solid earth-ocean geochemical exchanges; and
(c) the first complete coral record of the
last deglacial sealevel rise from a site far from ice sheets and
tectonic disturbance.
19. The success and importance of the on-going
UK-IODP Directed Science Program to the UK environmental research
community can be judged by:
(a) the number of high profile papers published
as a result of the programme (eg, 24 papers in the highly competitive
scientific journals Nature and Science from 2004
to 2006);
(b) the involvement in IODP of all the research
active university geoscience departments as well as the major
NERC institutes and collaborative centres;
(c) the large number of UK scientists involved
in formulating and implementing new drilling proposals;
(d) the active effective involvement of UK
scientists in the science advisory structures of IODP and ECORD;
(e) the uptake of grants and research support
in the UK programme;
(f) the success of IODP initiated and sponsored
conferences in publicising both opportunities in the programme
and the results of recent ocean drilling; and
(g) the role of IODP expeditions in the training
of the next generation of UK environmental scientists through
shipboard participation and cutting edge PhD topics.
20. The IODP makes a significant contribution
to the UK science strategy including providing national and international
scientific leadership and supporting a world class environmental
science community. It makes essential contributions to the priority
areas of climate change, biogeochemical fluxes, resources, geohazards
and research training. Membership of the Integrated Ocean Drilling
Program is an essential component of the UK's marine infrastructure.
To enable UK scientists to maintain and further
develop their leadership of scientific ocean drilling, the subscription
to IODP should be complimented by a science support package of
similar scope to the investments presently made by our major international
oceanographic partners (eg, Germany, USA).
January 2007
14 See http://www.iodp.org Back
15
Available from http://www.iodp.org/isp/ Back
16
http://www.bgs.ac.uk/iodp/UK_ILP.html Back
17
See http://iodp.tamu.edu/publicinfo/drillship.html Back
18
See http://www.jamstec.go.jp/chikyu/eng/CHIKYU/index.html Back
19
See http://www.eso.ecord.org/expeditions/msp.htm Back
|
