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November
14, 2006 Fifty-one
researchers, prominent Earth scientists
representing 15 countries, gathered recently in Switzerland to forge a
global
strategy for advancing understanding of continental rifting and
break-up
through the use of a new array of multiple drilling platforms provided
by the
Integrated Ocean Drilling Program. The group's emerging plan is
discussed in an
article in the November 21 edition of Eos,
a publication of the American Geophysical Union. The authors are
Millard (Mike)
Coffin of the University of Tokyo; Dale Sawyer of Rice University,
Houston;
Timothy Reston of University of Birmingham, UK; and Joann Stock of the
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. Continental-rifting
and continental break-up are not yet
well understood by scientists. Mike Coffin, lead author and one of the
meeting's co-chairs, explains: "We do not yet understand the driving
forces of rifting and break-up, or the tectonic processes that control
and
accompany the phenomena. We need to investigate the mechanisms that
generate
huge volumes of magma that flow very quickly over broad areas of
rifting
margins, and the role of fluids and volatiles during rifting. Also,
there is an
unknown heat budget associated with rifting." He adds, "Only a
comprehensive, multi-disciplinary approach that includes ocean drilling
will
move us to greater understanding of these processes." The emerging
scientific drilling proposal includes sampling
relatively young, active rifting zones in the western Pacific Ocean
(near Papua
New Guinea) and the Gulf of California; sampling ancient continental
margins
off East Greenland, Norway, the British Isles, and western Australia to
investigate magma-forming and eruption processes associated with
rifting and
breakup; and testing tectonic hypotheses at hyper-extended margins in
the south
Atlantic Ocean, off the Iberian peninsula, and off the coast of
Newfoundland. The researchers
involved with the continental rifting and
break-up proposal expect to submit their drilling proposal to the
Integrated
Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), the world's most ambitious international
marine
research program, next April. IODP undertakes scientific ocean drilling
expeditions to investigate solid Earth cycles and geodynamics;
environmental
change, processes and effects; the deep biosphere and the sub-seafloor
ocean.
Expeditions are developed from drilling proposals submitted by
scientists,
individually or in groups. Submitted proposals are accepted and
evaluated twice
a year: April 1 and October 1. ##
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