Proceedings of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program 318: Wilkes Land Glacial History

• Main Authors: Escutia, Carlota, Brinkhuis, Henk, Klaus, Adam, Bendle, James A.P., Bijl, Peter K., Bohaty, Steven, Carr, Stephanie, Dunbar, Robert B., Fehr, Annick, Flores, Jose A., Gonzalez, Jhon Jairo, Hayden, Travis G., Huck, Claire, Iwai, Masao, Jimenez-Espejo, Francisco J., Katsuki, Kota, Kong, Gee Soo, McKay, Robert M., Nakai, Mutsumi, Olney, Matthew, Passchier, Sandra, Pekar, Stephen F., Pross, Jörg, Riesselman, Christina, Röhl, Ursula, Sakai, Toyosaburo, Shrivastava, Prakash Kumar, Stickley, Catherine E., Sugisaki, Saiko T., Tauxe, Lisa, Tuo, Shouting, van de Flierdt, Tina, Welsh, Kevin, Williams, Trevor, Yamane, Masako
• Other Authors: Integrated Ocean Drilling Program
• Format: Book
• Language: unknown
• Published: Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Management International, Inc. 2011
• Subjects: Integrated Ocean Drilling Program; IODP; JOIDES Resolution; Expedition 318; Site U1355; Site U1356; Site U1357; Site U1358; Site U1359; Site U1360; Site U1361; Wilkes Land margin; East Antarctic Ice Sheet; Environmental change; processes; and effects; Australo-Antarctic Gulf; Adelie drifts; Antarc*; Antarctic; Ice Sheet; Wilkes Land
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10877868; https://doi.org/10.2204/iodp.proc.318.2011

Understanding the evolution and dynamics of the Antarctic cryosphere, from its inception during the Eocene–Oligocene transition (~34 Ma) through the significant subsequent periods of likely coupled climate and atmospheric greenhouse gas changes, is not only of major scientific interest but also is of great importance for society. Drilling the Antarctic Wilkes Land margin along an inshore to offshore transect was designed to provide a long-term record of the sedimentary archives of Cenozoic Antarctic glaciation and its intimate relationships with global climatic and oceanographic change. The principal goals were (1) To establish the timing and nature of the first arrival of ice at the Wilkes Land margin inferred to have occurred during the earliest Oligocene (reflecting Oligocene isotope Event 1 around ~34 Ma), (2) To reconstruct the nature and age of the changes in the geometry of the progradational wedge interpreted to correspond with large fluctuations in the extent of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet and possibly coinciding with the transition from a wet-based to a cold-based glacial regime, (3) To obtain a high-resolution record of Antarctic climate variability during the late Neogene and Quaternary, and (4) To obtain an unprecedented ultrahigh resolution (i.e., annual to decadal) Holocene record of climate variability. The Wilkes Land drilling program was developed to constrain the age, nature, and paleoenvironment of deposition of the previously only seismically inferred glacial sequences. Drilling the Wilkes Land margin has a unique advantage in that seismic unconformity WL-U3, inferred to separate preglacial strata below from glacial strata above in the continental shelf, can be traced to the continental rise deposits, allowing sequences to be linked from shelf to rise. Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition 318 recovered ~2000 m of high-quality middle Eocene–Holocene sediments from Sites U1355, U1356, U1359, and U1361 on the Wilkes Land rise and Sites U1357, U1358, and U1360 on the Wilkes Land shelf ...