In order to implement the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Expedition 346 (‘Asian monsoon’ cruise), the JODIES Resolution research vessel started from Alaska, USA on July 29, 2013 and transited across the North Pacific and finally drilled and recovered 6135.3 meters sediment cores in the Japan sea/East Sea and the East China Sea. The entire cruise spent two months and ended on September 28, 2013 in the port of Busan, Korea. As one of the two Chinese scientist representatives, Dr. Shiming Wan from the Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences boarded the expedition. There are 35 members of shipboard science party of IODP Expedition 346, who are from 10 countries.
IODP (2003-) and its precursors including Ocean Drilling Program (ODP, 1985-2003) and Deep Sea Drilling Program (DSDP, 1968-1983) are an international earth science research program with the biggest scale, longest time span and most attended countries. The 46-years history and achievements of DSDP, ODP and IODP have expanded the geology from land to global, from the surface to the deeper interior of the earth, which influenced and changed the development route of almost all earth science disciplines. China jointed this great program in 1998.
The major scientific objectives of IODP expedition 346 are to reconstruct the evolution history of Paleoceanography in the Japan Sea/East Sea and the East China Sea over the last five million years ago and discover the oscillations mechanism of the Asian monsoon on millennial time-scale. This expedition recovered 6135.3 m of cores from 31 holes at 9 sites, which establish a record amount of core to be recovered by any single expedition during IODP and provide excellent materials to study the correlations between land, sea and atmosphere in the context of the Asian monsoon system. Dr. Wan plans to carry out comprehensive research and international cooperation with the science party on the recovered sediments, which will be helpful to improve the ability in marine geology discipline in our institute.
Fig. 1 Transit map and drilled locations of IODP Expedition 346
Fig. 2 Group members of sedimentologists of IODP Expedition 346
(From left, front row：Hongbo Zheng in Nanjing Normal University, China; Maria-Angela Bassetti from Université de Perpignan, France; Martin Ziegler from Cardiff University, UK; Larry Peterson from University of Miami, USA; Takuya Sagawa from Kyushu University, Japan；From left, back row：Ken Ikehara from Geological Survey of Japan; Shiming Wan from Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China、Akinori Karasuda from University of Tokyo, Japan; Samuel Toucanne from IFREMER, France; Andrew Henderson from University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK)