Das Projekt "Sub project: Fabric genesis, strength and physical properties of young Sediments, Ursa and Brazos-Trinity basins, Gulf of Mexico. A follow-up laboratory study of IODP Expedition 308" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Ozeanforschung Kiel (GEOMAR), Forschungsbereich 4 Dynamik des Ozeanbodens: Marine Geodynamik durchgeführt. How do catastrophic submarine mass movements come about, and are sediment consolidation, fabric genesis, and texture development important controlling factors? This is the principal question of the FastSed project proposed here for funding. In an environment which has arguably the fastest finegrained sedimentation on modern Earth, IODP Expedition 308, Gulf of Mexico Hydrogeology, has created a unique and comprehensive data set of sediment petrography, physical properties, and downhole measurements of overpressure. These data serve as foundation for a study of geotechnical properties, microfabric and crystallographic preferred orientation of clays to identify and quantify fabric building mechanisms in muds sedimented by fallout and by submarine mass transport. The analytical techniques employed are triaxial testing and ring shear testing. Reference materials will be studied by scanning electron microscopy and X-ray texture goniometry. It is hoped that FastSed results will make a basic contribution to the assessment of stability problems of sedimented continental slopes. This is especially relevant for areas where current and future exploration for hydrocarbons require major technical installations at the seafloor, such as the Gulf of Mexico or the mid-Norwegian margin.
Das Projekt "Untersuchung der Wanderungen von Calanus finmarchius zwischen den Schelfmeeren Nordwesteuropas, ICOS" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Universität Hamburg, Zentrum für Meeres- und Klimaforschung, Institut für Meereskunde (IfM) durchgeführt. ICOS is an interdisciplinary project with the goal to determine the scope for climatically induced spatial and temporal variability in the annual invasion of the Northern North Sea shelf waters by the copepod Calanus finmarchicus. A baroclinic shelf-ocean circulation model, HAMSOM, is applied to generate high resolution three-dimensional hydrodynamic flow-fields. Model results confirm the existence of the energetic North Atlantic Current at the northwest European shelf edge. The branch which flows into the Norwegian trench partly re-circulates to re-join with the North Atlantic Current. However, the main body of the North Sea inflow continues to proceed southward until about 60degree N. The hydrodynamic model is run for the period January to June for several years with realistic time-dependent wind forcing to investigate the observed inter-annual variability of Calanus abundance. Selected episodes from these simulations are run with nested fine-scale model to determine the effect of the higher model resolution on the Lagrangian analysis for the particle tracking model.