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International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 401 preliminary report; Mediterranean-Atlantic gateway exchange; 10 December, 2023-9 February, 2024
Conference proceeding   Open access

International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 401 preliminary report; Mediterranean-Atlantic gateway exchange; 10 December, 2023-9 February, 2024

Rachel Flecker, Emmanuelle Ducassou, Trevor Williams, Udara Amarathunga, Barbara Balestra, Melissa Berke, Clara Blaettler, Shamar Chin, Moumita Das, Kosuke Egawa, …
Preliminary Report - International Ocean Discovery Program, Vol.401
04/2024
DOI: 10.14379/iodp.pr.401.2024
url
https://doi.org/10.14379/iodp.pr.401.2024View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

Marine gateways play a critical role in the exchange of water, heat, salt, and nutrients between oceans and seas. Changes in gateway geometry can significantly alter both the pattern of global ocean circulation and climate. Today, the volume of dense water supplied by Atlantic-Mediterranean exchange through the Gibraltar Strait is among the largest in the global ocean. For the past 5 My, this overflow has generated a saline plume at intermediate depths in the Atlantic that deposits distinctive contouritic sediments and contributes to the formation of North Atlantic Deep Water. This single gateway configuration only developed in the Early Pliocene. During the Miocene, two narrow corridors linked the Mediterranean and Atlantic: one in northern Morocco and the other in southern Spain. Formation of these corridors followed by progressive restriction and closure resulted in extreme salinity fluctuations in the Mediterranean, leading to the precipitation of the Messinian Salinity Crisis salt giant. International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 401 is the offshore drilling component of a Land-2-Sea drilling proposal, Investigating Miocene Mediterranean-Atlantic Gateway Exchange (IMMAGE). Its aim is to recover a complete record of Atlantic-Mediterranean exchange from its Late Miocene inception to its current configuration by targeting Miocene offshore sediments on either side of the Gibraltar Strait. Miocene cores from the two precursor connections now exposed on land will be obtained by future International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) campaigns.
Atlantic Ocean Biostratigraphy Education Marine Environment Mediterranean Sea Physical Properties Alboran Sea Areal geology Cenozoic chemical composition Expedition 401 Foraminifera geophysical methods geophysical profiles geophysical surveys International Ocean Discovery Program IODP Site U1385 IODP Site U1609 IODP Site U1610 IODP Site U1611 lithostratigraphy Messinian Messinian Salinity Crisis microfossils Miocene nannofossils Neogene North Atlantic Northeast Atlantic paleo-oceanography paleoclimatology paleoenvironment paleomagnetism Pliocene public awareness seismic methods seismic profiles surveys Tertiary upper Miocene West Mediterranean

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