Investigating Miocene Mediterranean-Atlantic Gateway Exchange
The IMMAGE Land-2-Sea Drilling Project
IMMAGE is an ambitious scientific drilling and climate research project designed to recover sediments that record Atlantic -Mediterranean exchange 8 - 4 million years ago. This record is critical for understanding the role of Mediterranean overflow in driving climate change at a time when the connection between the two marine systems was shrinking. Gateway restriction caused Mediterranean salinity rise progressively ultimately resulting in the precipitation of around 5% of the ocean’s salt on the Mediterranean sea floor. This salt giant known is as the ‘Messinian Salinity Crisis’.
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The records of Atlantic-Mediterranean exchange will be recovered by targeting Miocene offshore sediments on either side of the Gibraltar Strait with IODP during Expedition 401 (completed Dec 23 - Feb 24) and by drilling Miocene core from the two precursor connections now exposed on land in Southern Spain and Northern Morocco with ICDP.
Map of the Late Miocene Atlantic-Mediterranean marine connections and IMMAGE’s onshore and offshore drilling targets
IMMAGE is the first ever Land-2-Sea project involving both coordinated onshore and offshore scientific drilling
Scientific Objectives
IMMAGE has three scientific objectives that focus on both Late Miocene palaeoclimate and fundamental physical oceanography.
1
To document the time at which the Atlantic first started to receive a distinct overflow from the Mediterranean and to evaluate quantitatively its role in Late Miocene global climate and regional environmental change.
2
To recover a complete record of Atlantic-Mediterranean exchange before, during and after the Messinian Salinity Crisis and to evaluate the causes and consequences of this extreme oceanographic event, locally, regionally and globally.
3
To test our quantitative understanding of the behavior of ocean overflow plumes during the most extreme exchange in Earth’s history.