Deep Earth Sampling
Working Group Update 2008
B. Ildefonse, Working Group Chair
Members
The WG for Deep Earth Sampling has one new member in 2008: Huaiyang Zhou (Tongji University, China).
Recent events
- A Magellan workshop "Lithospheric heterogeneities, hydrothermal regimes, and links between abiotic and biotic processes at slow spreading ridges", partly funded by InterRidge, was held on September 2008 in Montpellier, France (see article, IR News 2008).
- IODP recently set up a Thematic Review Committee (Oceanic Crustal Structure and Formation; www.iodp.org/trc/), which met in Oct. 2008, Zürich, Switzerland. A report should be available soon on the IODP web site.
Future of the WG
Our WG was formed in 2004 as part of the InterRidge Next Decade Plan. Following our activities associated with the Mission Moho Workshop in 2006 and a group proposal submitted in 2007, it was time in 2008 to either disband the WG or move forward with a new mandate. We held several discussions over email prior to the 2008 IR Steering Committee meeting. At this recent IR STCOM meeting, it was recognized the importance of our WG in this upcoming year as the IODP INVEST workshop in September 2009 (listed below) will be receiving input for planning the next decade of IODP science beyond 2013. The Steering Committee emphasized the importance of our WG in contributing to this planning for the future of scientific ocean drilling. Thus, we will continue the WG, with a more focused mandate to provide inputs on priorities and targets to the 2009 IODP INVEST workshop. In the short-term, we are planning to meet for a discussion just prior to the AGU Fall Meeting in December 2008. We also plan to identify money and time to possibly organize a dedicated WG meeting next year, before the INVEST meeting. In addition, the IR Steering Committee recognized the need for a liaison between this IR WG, representing the IR community-at-large, and IODP.
Upcoming events
- AGU Fall Meeting, Sunday, December 14, 2008, WG meeting with discussion open to other community members who are interested in joining our planning effort for the 2009 IODP INVEST Workshop.
- ECORD Summer School on Geodynamics of Mid-Ocean Ridges, 31 August - 11 September 2009, Bremen, Germany,
http://www.glomar.uni-bremen.de/ECORD_Summer_School_2009.html.
The IR WG members are involved in organizing this summer school with colleagues from MARUM and the IODP core repository in Bremen. We hope to attract about 30 PhD students and Postdocs, to work on geodynamics of mid-ocean ridges, with a focus on drilling results (and projects) in the Atlantic. We will take advantage of the Atlantic cores being stored in Bremen to conduct practical courses using IODP cores and samples. The summer school is primarily sponsored by GLOMAR and MARUM in Bremen, and by ECORD, and partially funded by InterRidge to open the participation to students/instructors from non-ECORD countries.
- IODP New Ventures in Exploring Scientific Targets (INVEST) 2009, Sept. 23-25, 2009, University of Bremen, Germany, http://www.marum.de/iodp-invest.html.
The purpose of this workshop is to define the scientific research goals of the second phase of the IODP, expected to begin late in 2013.
