Exploring Subseafloor Life with the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program
Vancouver British Columbia, Canada

In October 2006, this workshop will bring together microbiologists, biogeochemists, geologists, and other scientists to consider how greater understanding of subseafloor life can be advanced through the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program. Workshop objectives: to outline major science questions, identify possible scientific drilling targets in the ocean floor, discuss required protocols and technology developments, and develop collaborative relationships.

As one of its many scientific accomplishments, the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) provided the first evidence of abundant microbes and diverse microbial activities deep beneath the seafloor. This exciting discovery set the stage for further exploration of the extraordinary ecosystem beneath the seafloor using drilling technology. Such exploration will undoubtedly yield many unexpected results. For this reason, exploration of subseafloor life is highlighted as one of IODP’s three main scientific themes.

Seawater migrates through sediments and actively circulates through faults, fractures, and other permeable conduits in the ocean crust and underlying mantle; in doing so, it redistributes heat, alters rock, forms massive mineral deposits, and influences the chemical composition of the oceans. This massive and dynamic plumbing system cycles the entire volume of the ocean through the subseafloor every one million years. Over a surprisingly broad range of subsurface depths, temperatures, and pressures, the subseafloor ocean hosts an extensive microbial population. By some estimates, as much as two-thirds of Earth’s microbial biomass may live beneath the ocean floor. How microbial communities survive in such a seemingly inhospitable environment with little or no input from photosynthetic organisms poses basic questions for biogeochemistry, microbial physiology, and microbial ecology. The subseafloor life also represents a unique natural laboratory that offers new and barely explored opportunities to examine the ecological and evolutionary processes that drive microbial diversity, community organization, and microbial interactions.

Workshop participants will examine the current state of knowledge regarding the subseafloor life, and will be challenged to identify the first-order science questions in exploring subseafloor life and its interaction mechanisms with the subseafloor ocean. Participants will be encouraged to develop strategies to address these science questions by combining observations, sample and remote and in situ data collection, laboratory experiments, and modeling. To foster the participation of a wide community of international scientists, science community, participants will also have the opportunity to learn about the IODP proposal process and current proposed drilling projects that focus on biology themes.

Attending are:

Ms Elizabeth Padilla, a graduate student the Georgia Institute of Technology (right in photo)

Ms Karyna Rosario, a graduate student at the University of South Florida (left in photo)