| Summary: | The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program,aninternational collaboration of Earth,ocean,and life scientists,commenced on 1 October2003 (IODP;www.iodp.org).Building on thesuccesses of previous scientific ocean drillingprograms,the IODP offers scientists worldwideunprecedented opportunities to address avast array of scientific problems in all subma-rine settings.The scientific advisory structureof the proposal-driven IODP recently plannedthe inaugural drilling expeditions,targetingcritical scientific problems in the easternPacific,central Arctic,and north AtlanticOceans in 2004 and 2005 (Figure 1,Table 1).Co-led by Japan and the United States,withinitial,significant contributions from the Euro-pean Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling(ECORD),the IODP is guided by an initial science plan,Earth,Oceans,and Life(www.iodp.org/isp.html),developed with broad input fromthe international geoscientific community.Forthe first time,scientists will have permanentriser and non-riser drilling vessels and mission-specific capabilities such as drilling barges,and jack-up rigs for shallow water and Arcticdrilling at their disposal.Japan is providing thenew riser vessel,Chikyu,to the IODP beginningin 2006;the United States is supplying the non-riser drilling vessel,currently JOIDES Resolution,beginning in 2004;and the ECORD is furnishingmission-specific platforms,also beginning in 2004
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