IODP Lord Howe Rise Drilling Proposal: Tectonics and Paleoclimate Data

Geoscience Australia and JAMSTEC proposed a deep stratigraphic drilling project on the Lord Howe Rise continental ribbon in the southwest Pacific. The proposal, submitted to the International Ocean Discovery Program in 2015, aims to core sediments up to 2500 meters below the seafloor to study tectonic evolution, Cretaceous paleoclimate, and sub-seafloor microbial life. Preparations included seismic surveys in 2016 and 2017 to map crustal structure and acquire geotechnical data for planned drilling in 2019 or 2020.

Use Cases

• Modeling plate tectonic cycles and continental evolution based on recovered Cretaceous and older sediments.
• Reconstructing Cretaceous paleoclimate using biomarker and micropaleontology data from high-latitude southwest Pacific cores.
• Studying the evolution of sub-seafloor microbial life over a 100-million-year timeframe from deep sediment cores.
• Analyzing crustal structure and sedimentary basin architecture using 2D seismic reflection and refraction data.

Strengths

• Proposal rated 'excellent' by the IODP Science Evaluation Panel in January 2017.
• Seismic survey data helped constrain basement depth and suggests crust is about 20 km thick beneath the Lord Howe Rise.
• Planned drilling targets depths up to 2500 m below seafloor, potentially accessing a >100-million-year geological record.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network via data_gov_au.

Collection Method

Proposed data from planned International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) deep riser drilling and preparatory seismic surveys.

Time Range

Proposal submitted 2015; preparatory surveys 2016-2017; planned drilling 2019-2020.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-16 10:04:20.281600; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Lord Howe Rise in the Tasman Sea, southwest Pacific Ocean.