Project Details
Projekt
Seismic investigation of sedimentary fill and bedrock geometry of maar lake "Potrok Aike", Southern Patagonia (potential ICDP drill site)
Subject Area
Mineralogy, Petrology and Geochemistry
Term
from 2007 to 2008
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 36903056
The planned project is a key contribution to investigations at Laguna Potrok Aike located in a supposed maar in Patagonia (Argentina). The lake is thought to reveal a probably undisturbed, high-resolution paleoclimate record of up to 770,000 years and has been identified as one of the next priorities of the International Continental Drilling Program (ICDP). The project proposed here will be conducted on the existing seismic profiles that were acquired during an expedition in 2005 and is an essential part of the seismic pre-site survey prior to the deep drilling phase. The project has four key themes: (i) investigation of the lower sedimentary layers in order to find an undisturbed, adequate coring location for the planned ICDP deep drilling; (ii) improve the understanding of the lake dynamics including its strong fluctuations in lake level due to changing climate conditions; (iii) the reconstruction of the geometry of the proposed maar structure in order to prove its phreatomagmatic origin and to compare it with other, welldescribed maars; and (iv) the calculation of mass balances in order to unravel the crater's initial geometry and to probably describe it as a source of eolian sand and dust.
DFG Programme
Infrastructure Priority Programmes
