Extended Abstracts for the International ANTOSTRAT Symposium on The Geologic Record of the Antarctic Ice Sheet from Drilling, Coring and Seismic Studies

Riassunto

The Antarctic Offshore Stratigraphy Project (ANTOSTRAT) was conceived in 1989 under the auspices of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) to promote collaborative studies on Cenozoic Antarctic glacial history derived from offshore geologic and geophysical information. The initial thrust was the compilation of existing seismic and coring data in five principal working areas around Antarctica, with each considered to record the history of different parts of the Antarctic ice sheet, e.g. Antarctic Peninsula, Prydz Bay, Ross Sea, Weddell Sea, Wilkes Land. Studies based on these compilations were reported at Symposia in Monterey, California, USA (Asilomar) in 1990 and in Siena, Italy (Certosa di Pontignano) in 1994. Thereafter, the project objectives changed to emphasise acquisition of geologic samples by drilling and coring, and to provide basic information for building palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimate models for key periods in Antarctic glacial history. The extended abstracts herein for this symposium in Erice, Sicily (Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture) in 2001, present contributions that deal with many recent drilling and coring operations (e.g. ODP Legs 177, 178, 188, and 189; CIROS and Cape Roberts Project) and seismic investigations, conducted principally over the Antarctic continental margin and adjacent ocean basins. The symposium is also a forum for reevaluating general science priorities and for planning future collaborative projects, to ensure continued progress in understanding Cenozoic Antarctic palaeoenvironmental history. This compilation was prepared before the symposium, and the extended abstracts are given without additional peer review. One or more volumes of papers will be published based on these studies. The Erice ANTOSTRAT Symposium is made possible by the financial support of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), the Italian Antarctic Research Program (PNRA), the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP), the U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Polar...