Continental Drilling in the East African Rift Lakes: A Strategic Planning Workshop

东非裂湖大陆钻探：战略规划研讨会

• 批准号: 1012171
• 负责人: James Russell
• 金额: $ 6.48万
• 依托单位: Brown University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-04-15 至 2012-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1012171&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Continental; Drilling; East; African; Rift

This grant supports a workshop to develop a strategic plan for continental scientific drilling in the East African Rift Lakes. The objectives are to bring together experts in the fields of paleoclimatology, paleoanthropology, climate modeling, paleoceanography, scientific drilling operations, rift basin tectonics, volcanology, and stratigraphy, in order to define and prioritize key scientific goals of these diverse disciplines, and to link these goals to specific, prioritized lake drilling targets within a cost/benefit framework. Following the successful scientific drilling operations in Lake Malawi, there has been an enormous level of activity within the paleoclimate and geophysics communities that has provided necessary site survey and background data that could lead to drilling in several of the East African lakes, including Lakes Tanganyika, Albert, Victoria, and Turkana. These developments have set the stage for new drilling projects to develop long, quantitative, highly resolved records from some of the world's best lacustrine archives of Plio-Pleistocene tropical paleoclimate. Each lake would provide very different temporal resolution and continuity and thus different insights into African environmental history. Each drilling target also would have very different costs and technical challenges. Future lake drilling programs must consider how to maximally complement ongoing initiatives to generate new African paleoenvironmental records using offshore marine sediments and speleothems and drilling initiatives in paleolakes. Given the enormous scientific opportunities for scientific drilling in the East African rift lakes, we propose that a workshop is needed to determine how best to proceed, through a cost/benefit analysis of the technical challenges and scientific outcomes of each drilling target.Intellectual Merit: The East African rift lakes contain an unparalleled record of climatic and environmental history through the Plio-Pleistocene spanning tens of degrees of latitude, with resolution and continuity comparable to deep-sea sediments and ice cores. Results from scientific drilling in these lakes will directly meet several key areas of emphasis, including investigations of the changing aspects of life, ecology, environments, and biogeography in past geologic time and understanding the complexities of Earth's deep time (pre-Holocene) climate systems. The workshop will identify new research areas that lie between paleoclimatology, paleoanthropology, and tectonics, fostering transdisciplinary research and complementing the key goals of the NSF Continental Dynamics and Human Origins programs. In addition, our workshop will develop research priorities for sedimentary and paleoenvironmental studies of the Plio-Pleistocene in East Africa, promoting future scientific investigations in this region. This plan will published in a workshop report, and will set the stage for full drilling proposals to ICDP and NSF.Broader Impacts: The workshop will foster broader collaborations among specialists from varied disciplines, including paleoclimate, paleoanthropology, and rift basin tectonophysics, promoting a truly interdisciplinary model for scientific drilling in lakes. The workshop also offers opportunities for international collaborations between American, European, and African scientists, many of whom are also women or early career scientists. The proposed workshop participant list reflects the desire to build participation from diverse international backgrounds and groups traditionally underrepresented in sciences.

这笔赠款支持举办研讨会，制定东非裂湖大陆科学钻探战略计划。其目标是汇集古气候学、古人类学、气候建模、古海洋学、科学钻探作业、裂谷盆地构造学、火山学和地层学领域的专家，以确定这些不同学科的关键科学目标并确定其优先顺序，并将这些目标是在成本/效益框架内确定具体、优先的湖泊钻探目标。在马拉维湖成功进行科学钻探作业之后，古气候和地球物理学界开展了大量活动，提供了必要的现场调查和背景数据，可能导致在东非的几个湖泊（包括坦噶尼喀湖）进行钻探，阿尔伯特、维多利亚和图尔卡纳。这些进展为新的钻探项目奠定了基础，以便从世界上一些最好的上里欧-更新世热带古气候湖泊档案中开发长期、定量、高分辨率的记录。每个湖泊都会提供非常不同的时间分辨率和连续性，从而对非洲环境历史产生不同的见解。每个钻探目标也将面临截然不同的成本和技术挑战。未来的湖泊钻探计划必须考虑如何最大程度地补充正在进行的利用近海海洋沉积物和洞穴沉积物生成新的非洲古环境记录的举措以及古湖泊钻探举措。鉴于东非裂谷科学钻探蕴藏着巨大的科学机会，我们建议召开一次研讨会，通过对每个钻探目标的技术挑战和科学成果进行成本/效益分析，确定如何最好地进行。东非裂谷湖包含了跨越数十个纬度的上里欧-更新世气候和环境历史的无与伦比的记录，其分辨率和连续性可与深海沉积物和冰芯相媲美。这些湖泊的科学钻探结果将直接满足几个关键的重点领域，包括对过去地质时期生命、生态、环境和生物地理学变化方面的调查，以及了解地球深层（全新世前）气候系统的复杂性。该研讨会将确定古气候学、古人类学和构造学之间的新研究领域，促进跨学科研究并补充美国国家科学基金会大陆动力学和人类起源项目的主要目标。此外，我们的研讨会还将制定东非上更新世沉积和古环境研究的研究重点，促进该地区未来的科学研究。该计划将在研讨会报告中发表，并将为向 ICDP 和 NSF 提出完整的钻探提案奠定基础。 更广泛的影响：研讨会将促进古气候、古人类学和裂谷盆地构造物理学等不同学科的专家之间更广泛的合作，促进真正的跨学科湖泊科学钻探模型。该研讨会还为美国、欧洲和非洲科学家之间的国际合作提供了机会，其中许多科学家也是女性或早期职业科学家。拟议的研讨会参与者名单反映了建立不同国际背景和传统上在科学领域代表性不足的群体参与的愿望。