Tools and Strategies

Integration

IODP research objects for polar areas complement several European and international programs and provide implementation for research efforts of polar organisations.
The European Polar Board under the umbrella of the European Science Foundation (ESF) is proposing the construction of a new research icebreaker with deep drilling capability (AURORA BOREALIS) to facilitate especially Arctic investigations. The icebreaker is intended to serve as platform for IODP long-term drilling activities in polar areas.
The IODP Arctic drilling objectives are in accordance with major research initiatives of ESF and IGCP/PAGES (International Geosphere-Biosphere Program/ Past Global Changes). Initiatives of IGCP/PAGES dedicated to polar research could benefit by IODP Arctic drilling activities. CAPE (Circum Arctic PaleoEnvironment) an IGCP/PAGES initiative intends a circum-Arctic synthesis of environmental reconstructions by pooling international and interdisciplinary research activities. Nansen Arctic Drilling (NAD) closely linked to PAGES and to ODP/JOI is a research effort designed to study the Arctic's geological evolution and past environmental changes. It should be implemented by the fit-to-mission Arctic drilling strategy of IODP. Useful links could be tied to initiatives of IASC (International Arctic Science Committee). These are MAST (Map of Arctic Sediment Thickness), which is yielding the recovery, preservation and rationalization of seismic and potential field observations to construct a digital data base and maps of Arctic circum polar sediments and IBCAO (International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean) which has collected all available bathymetric information about the Arctic Ocean to produce a precise map. Further close links exist to research initiatives of IMAGES and to MESH (Marine Aspects of Earth System History) an element of the US Global Change Research.

Many Antarctic national and international endeavours could be complemented by mission-specific drilling operations around Antarctica. The achievement of future goals of Antarctic research defined by ANTOSTRAT (Antarctic Offshore Stratigraphy) an initiative of SCAR (Scientific Committee of Antarctic Research) would be facilitated. This program ended in July 2002 and will be carried on by ACE (Antarctic Climate Evolution) which is now in a SCAR Science Programme Planning Group stage. It intends to reconstruct the paleoclimatic and glacial history of the Antarctic region from the study of sedimentary record surrounding the continent. Antarctic scientific drilling objectives are also in accordance with other major international Antarctic research initiatives such as ANTIME (Late Quaternary Sedimentary Record of the Antarctic Ice Margin Evolution), ANDRILL a drilling program to investigate ice sheet behavior and sea ice dynamic during the last 35 Million years by New Zealand, the US, Italy Germany, and others, and SHALDRIL, an effort to install a high-speed diamond drilling rig on the U.S. M/V Palmer for use in drilling 100-200 m deep holes on the continental shelf, initially in the Antarctic Peninsula. Further, close links exist to the research initiatives of IMAGES, a program to use the French ship R/V Marion Dufresne to acquire 50-m-long cores from sites around Antarctica, and PAGES (Past Global Changes).