The overall goal of the SMS Project is to develop a high-resolution history of past Antarctic ice sheet variation and climate evolution that can be integrated into continental and global records toward a better understanding of East Antarctica’s role in the past, present, and future global system. To achieve this goal, a 1100+ meter-deep borehole was drilled in the fall of 2007 that recovered an exceptional archive of climatic and tectonic changes as old as 20 million years ago (early Miocene).

Base map of McMurdo Sound showing the two recently drilled ANDRILL drilling project: McMurdo Ice shelf (MIS) and southern McMurdo Sound (SMS) as well as the three project originally proposed in the ANDRILL McMurdo sound Portfolio.

I was one of the on-ice sedimentologists for the SMS Project, in which we described sediments and developed records that showed the great changes that took place in Antarctic over the past 20 million years. My post drilling project will be to develop a high-resolution sequence stratigraphic framework of the interval from ~400 to 700 mbsf in the AND-2A SMS drillcore. The objective of the proposed research is: 1) to develop high-resolution lithofacies and sequence stratigraphic records for upper lower Miocene strata (17.9-16.1 Ma) recovered from the AND02-2A drillcore; 2) correlate them to global records (stratigraphic records from other margins and isotopic records) and 3) in collaboration with others tie the sequences and their bounding surfaces in to regional seismic data in the SMS region. This will include using the grains size studies carried out during the core characterization phase as well as additional samples that will be requested to detail the lithologic changes within the interval of study. Core images, PSICAT and my own lithologic descriptions will be used to identify intervals that need additional samples for grain size studies. I currently have a graduate student working on developing a high-resolution stratigraphic records.

This figure contains oxygen isotope records from sites from around the world that indicate changes in deep-sea water temperatures and ice volume at the poles.

My project will target the first climatic optimum that occurred during the late early Miocene (16.1-17.8 Ma), shown by the red box. This time period occurs between times of assumed increased ice volume in Antarctica based on oxygen isotopes from deep-sea records.