dilluns, 15 de gener de 2007 a les 12h, Sala de conferències sw l'Institut J. Almera (CSIC).
Per Kathryn Moran, Professor, Graduate School of Oceanography and Dept. of Ocean Engineering, University of Rhode Island

IODP Expedition 302 drilled and recovered cores for the first time from the Arctic Ocean very near the North Pole. The success of the Arctic Coring Expedition (ACEX) is a milestone in scientific ocean drilling. Previous programs-ODP and DSDP-were not able to drill in the Arctic Ocean because of the heavy, permanent sea ice cover that would crush normal ships. IODP opened up new possibilities for scientific ocean drilling by including Mission-Specific Platforms as part of the fleet. For ACEX, three icebreakers were fielded: an icebreaker-class drill ship, the Vidar Viking and two of the world's most powerful icebreakers, Oden and Sovetskiy Soyuz, that shielded the drill ship from the oncoming flow of heavy sea ice. ACEX's target was the Lomonosov Ridge, a sliver of continental crust that broke away from the Eurasian Plate more than 50 Ma. The ridge moved northward and subsided providing a rich environment for sedimentation that has continued to the present--capturing a cont