2006 Annual Meeting and Arctic Forum | Abstracts

HOTRAX-2005: International Collaborative Research in a Trans-Arctic-Ocean Expedition

Glenn W. Berger^1
1Earth and Ecosystem Sciences, Desert Research Institute, 2215 Raggio Parkway, Reno, NV, 89512-1095, USA, Phone 775-673-7354, Fax 775-674-7485, glenn.berger@dri.edu

The Arctic Ocean is the last great ocean to be explored with modern geophysical and geological tools, largely because of the extensive and variable ice cover. Not only is the ocean itself a "canary-in-the-mine" responder to global climate change, but may be an amplifier (via. feedbacks) of the same. Furthermore, we know little of the bottom sediments (containing a "long-term" record of past climate changes) and basement rocks. Thus in 2005 the execution of only the second two-ship trans-Arctic-Ocean scientific expedition had historical importance. The two icebreakers were the USCG Healy and the Swedish Oden. This expedition was sponsored by the US-National Science Foundation and Sweden's Polar Research Secretariat. On-board scientists and students were mainly from the US, Sweden, Canada, Norway, and Japan.

During the 2-month phase of the expedition, scientists on the icebreaker Healy collected data on sea-ice properties (thickness, albedo, etc.), recovered soft-sediment cores, conducted side-scan-sonar bottom mapping, and obtained sub-bottom sonar and seismic data. HOTRAX-05 increased the number of kilometers of seismic tracks for the Arctic Ocean by 30% (adding 2200 km), increased the number and quality of sediment cores in the western part by perhaps 100%, and obtained 29 piston cores greater than 12 m in length across the ocean. This unique collection of cores contains valuable information on the paleoclimatic and paleo-oceanographic conditions of this ocean, as well as regional sedimentation patterns. From the on-board magnetic-susceptibility measurements on cores, we now have a new regional correlation of sediment cores. However, much work on collected ice, seismic, and core data and samples is still in progress.