AGSO Cruise 149 Report: Antarctic Sediment Sampling for Climate History, 1995

February-April 1995 cruise of the R.V. Aurora Australis aimed at understanding modern sedimentary processes and the Plio-Pleistocene environmental history of Prydz Bay and the Kerguelen Plateau. The program sought to provide statements of Antarctic and Southern Ocean palaeoenvironments over intervals from 0-10,000 years to 0-5,000,000 years to inform climate change models. This record from the Australian Ocean Data Network describes the background, aims, and methods for the cruise.

Use Cases

• Modeling past Antarctic ice sheet fluctuations based on sediment records from the Lambert Glacier-Amery Ice shelf outlet.
• Reconstructing Southern Ocean water mass and polar front variability based on sedimentary sequences from the Kerguelen Plateau.
• Studying modern sedimentary processes on the Antarctic margin based on samples from trough-mouth fan deposits and shelf-basins.

Strengths

• Explicitly targets three distinct time intervals for paleoenvironmental study: 0-10,000 years, 0-160,000 years, and 0-5,000,000 years.
• Focuses on three specific geographical features: trough-mouth fans near Prydz Bay, shelf-basins on the Mac. Robertson Shelf, and depositional basins on the Kerguelen Plateau.
• Aims to link sedimentary records to major climate system components: the East Antarctic Ice Sheet and Southern Ocean circulation.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic/temporal bias inherent to the single 1995 cruise.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Marine geoscience cruise employing sediment sampling and analysis.

Time Range

February-April 1995 (cruise period); paleoenvironmental targets span 0-5,000,000 years.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-10 21:37:38.525188; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Prydz Bay, MacRobertson Shelf, and Kerguelen Plateau in the Southern Ocean/Antarctic region.