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Title: Expedition 356 Scientific Prospectus: Reefs, Oceans, and Climate
The Indonesian Throughflow (ITF) is a critical part of the global thermohaline conveyor. It plays a key role in transporting heat from the equatorial Pacific (the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool) to the Indian Ocean and exerts a major control on global climate. The complex tectonic history of the Indonesian Archipelago, a result of continued northward motion and impingement of the Australasian Plate into the Southeast Asian part of the Eurasian Plate, makes it difficult to reconstruct long-term (i.e., million year) ITF history from sites within the archipelago. The best areas to investigate ITF history are downstream in the Indian Ocean, either in the deep ocean away from strong tectonic deformation or along proximal passive margins that are directly under the influence of the ITF. Although previous Ocean Drilling Program and Deep Sea Drilling Project deepwater cores recovered in the Indian Ocean have been used to chart Indo-Pacific Warm Pool influence and, by proxy, ITF variability, these sections lack direct biogeographic and sedimentological evidence of the ITF. International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 356 will drill a transect of cores over 10° latitude on the northwest shelf (NWS) of Australia to obtain a 5 m.y. record of ITF, Indo-Pacific Warm Pool, and climate more » evolution that has the potential to match orbital-scale deep-sea records in its resolution. Coring the NWS will reveal a detailed shallow-water history of ITF variability and its relationship to climate. It will allow us to understand the history of the Australian monsoon and its variability, a system whose genesis is thought to be related to the initiation of the East Asian monsoon and is hypothesized to have been in place since the Pliocene or earlier. It also will lead to a better understanding of the nature and timing of the development of aridity on the Australian continent. Detailed paleobathymetric and stratigraphic data from the transect will also allow subsidence curves to be constructed to constrain the spatial and temporal patterns of vertical motions caused by the interaction between plate motion and convection within the Earth’s mantle, known as dynamic topography. The NWS is an ideal location to study this phenomenon because it is positioned on the fastest moving continent since the Eocene, on the edge of the degree two geoid anomaly. Accurate subsidence analyses over 10° of latitude can resolve whether northern Australia is moving with/over a time-transient or long-term stationary downwelling within the mantle, thereby vastly improving our understanding of deep-Earth dynamics and their impact on surficial processes. « less
Authors:
; ;
Award ID(s):
1326927
Publication Date:
NSF-PAR ID:
10233196
Journal Name:
Scientific prospectus
Volume:
356
ISSN:
2332-1385
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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