The IASC Marine Working Group is supporting a workshop on 'Overcoming Barriers to Arctic Ocean Scientific Drilling: The Site Survey Challenge'. The workshop will be lead by Naja Mikkelsen and Bernard Coakley and is scheduled to take place in Copenhagen, Denmark from 1 - 3 November 2011.
The Arctic Ocean is the last essentially un-drilled, un-sampled ocean basin. Arctic deep-sea drilling is the only means to acquire paleo-oceanographic and climatic records, and constrain the tectonic history of the basin.Among other issues, the lack of adequate site survey data and appropriate age models for these data hampers the development of mature drilling proposals. The focus of the workshop is to plan site survey campaigns based on existing and planned proposals and pre-proposals that were developed as a result of the successful 2008 Magellan workshop, "Arctic Ocean History: From Speculation to Reality."
The 2011 workshop is open for all interested scientists, including site survey specialists, PIs for existing and planned Arctic Ocean drilling proposals, ship operations people, and United Nations law of the sea specialists. The number of participants is limited to 60 persons including students and young scientists. Partial reimbursement and financial support will be available for students and young scientists and for a number of other invited participants.
The registration of interest deadline is Monday, 1 August 2011.