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 to rise progressively, ultimately resulting in the precipitation of around 5% of the ocean’s salt on the Mediterranean sea floor. This salt giant is known as the ‘Messinian Salinity Crisis’.
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 (drilling tentatively scheduled for 2027) 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.