2.3.7. Role of the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP)

Fig. 23. Deep drilling Innovarig facility of the GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (courtesy GFZ Potsdam).

Scientific Drilling has the unique capacity to provide exact, fundamental and globally significant information on the composition, structure and processes of the Earth´s crust.  The International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) coordinates continental scientific drilling efforts addressing research topics of high international priority. ICDP drilling projects are conducted at locations of global geoscientific significance where drilling can provide unprecedented insight into geodynamic processes of essential scientific and socio-economic relevance.

ICDP addresses such themes as climate dynamics and global environment, impact structures, geobiosphere and early life, volcanic systems and thermal regimes, mantle plumes and rifting, active faulting, collision zones and convergent margins and natural resources. The ICDP co-operates closely with the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) as the main scientific goals of both organisations largely overlap. Outstanding examples with a critical need for joint approaches are marine-continental transects across seismogenic zones, as wells as the integrated investigation of marine and continental climate archives.

The GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (GFZ), acting as the Executive agency for ICDP, participates in TOPO-EUROPE. Moreover, it is also involved in European drilling-related research initiatives. The need for specialized scientific drilling capabilities has led the GFZ to develop an innovative and modular drilling rig and equipment for scientific operations with a penetration capability of up to 5 km. The ‘InnovaRig’ (Fig. 23) is designed for use within Europe and will be ideal for drilling strategic targets in TOPO-EUROPE natural laboratories. Examples of specific projects and drilling locations for which the rig could be used are: a) the Sogne Fjord in Central Norway (uplift history and risk assessment of major submarine landslides); b) the North Anatolian Fault (in-situ stress measurements along the fault to better assess major seismic risk); c) Campi Flegrei (active volcanism and volcanic risk assessment in Italy); d) geothermal energy and intraplate volcanic fields.

Lake drilling, a notable strength of European geosciences, will enable to link high-resolution paleoclimatic data to the results of high-resolution tectonic investigations. TOPO-EUROPE researchers plan to study lake and river sediments as recorders of paleoclimate, variations of surface processes and paleotectonics.

In order to advance the understanding of the neotectonic evolution of Europe, a number of specific objectives are envisaged for scientific drilling under the auspices of TOPO-EUROPE, such as tracing environmental (vegetation and fauna, surface processes and paleotectonics) and climatic changes, eruptive volcanic history (e.g. tephra in the record of Monticchio), the evolution of the geomagnetic field (e.g. Eifel-Calabrian event), and correlation of the geological time-scale with the history of river terrace deposits and lake records as well as with loess deposits.