New Jersey Shallow Shelf: Onshore Science Party

Present-day sea levels are predicted to rise due to global warming, therefore sea-level change is one of the crucial issues affecting our planet and its inhabitants. Past sea-level rises and falls can be deciphered in sedimentary layers deposited during Earth`s history.

In the summer of 2007, the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), supported by the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP), implemented the New Jersey Shallow Shelf expedition (NJSS) to collect cores from early to mid-Miocene sedimentary sequences (some 24–14 million years old) off the coast of the eastern United States. The objective is to estimate the timing and magnitude of global sea-level changes during this time, and to determine the relationship between sea-level changes and the architecture of the sedimentary sequences. Major developments in Earth’s climate system over this period include intense Antarctic glaciation and the warm mid-Miocene ‘Climatic Optimum’ when ice sheets were at a relative minimum.

Important facts:
- Offshore phase of the expedition: April 30 - July 17, 2009
- three boreholes drilled
- iin wather depths of about 35 metres
- 45 to 60 kilometres off the coast of New Jersey
- 1,311, 4 metres of sediment cored
- deepest borehole: 756.65 metres
- length of the expedition: 1,803 hours
- only 10 hours interuption due to bad weather conditions
- drill platform: liftboat „Kayd“: 41.75 metres long, 21 metres wide, 3 legs of 75 metres length each
- Co-Chief scientists: Prof. Gregory Mountain, Rutgers-University New Jersey, USA; Prof. Jean-Noël Proust, University of Rennes, France
- duration of the Onshore Science Party in Bremen: November 6 - December 4, 2009.
- by 26 scientists from 11 countries.

The three drill sites form a key part of the so-called New Jersey/Mid-Atlantic transect; a suite of boreholes drilled over the last fifteen years in an effort to document global sea-level history over the past 42 million years. This transect has included drilling both onshore and farther offshore in deeper water. However, the critical zone for deciphering the sea-level history lies in the shallow-water region. This “missing link” was the target area for the NJSS expedition.

The European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling (ECORD) conducted the IODP NJSS expedition through the ECORD Science Operator (ESO), one of IODP’s three regional drilling operators and the program’s specialist in mission-specific platform operations. ECORD represents 17 nations and provides support to IODP as a contributing member.


Contacts:
Alan Stevenson, ESO Outreach Manager
British Geological Survey

+44 131 650 0376

Albert Gerdes, ESO Public Relations
MARUM / University of Bremen

+49 – 172 43 77 986