Colorado Plateau Drilling Project

• The goal of the Colorado Plateau Coring Project (CPCP) is to recover the complete early Mesozoic age section of this classic area to decipher the climatic, biotic, and tectonic evolution of western equatorial to temperate Pangea and derivative Laurasia. Core of this interval of strata on the Colorado Plateau will provide quintessential continuous reference sections placing 100 million years of climatic, biotic, and tectonic evolution, as well as two centuries of previous geoscience research, into a more precise and globally relevant chronostratigraphic and paleogeographic context. Central to the project are four, hypothesis-driven questions that require a scientific drilling experiment to answer:

1. what are the global or regional climate trends vs. plate position changes in "hot house" Pangea and subsequent Laurasia?
2. how do largely fluvial systems respond to cyclical climate change?
3. what are the rates and magnitudes of the transition from the Paleozoic to essentially modern terrestrial ecosystems? and
4. how does the stratigraphy of the basin sections reflect the interplay between spatially dynamic growth in accommodation space, uplift, and eustatic fluctuations in this in-plate epicontinental basin?

This proposed ICDP workshop is the necessary sequel to the recent International NSF- and DOSECC-funded workshop that concluded with a drilling concept to obtain three long (~1 km) cores and two shorter cores. The drilling areas were chosen to optimize the quality of data from the stratigraphic record for geochronologic, paleoclimatic, and tectonic analyses of the critical Early Mesozoic transitions in clear superposition. The proposed meeting will bring together key international researchers (both ICDP members and non-members) to refine the strategy of the coring program and plan the ICDP proposal. We will identify specific drilling locations, refine fundamental questions to be addressed, and maximize both the global importance and the societal relevance of the CPCP. With the further development of a robust and effective data management system and an education outreach program, the end result of the CPCP will be a synoptic view, in appropriate geochronologic context, of 100 million years of one of the largest and arguably most data-rich epicontinental basins in the world.

(Figure ©: A, B: Anky-man, Wikipedia; C, D: Riggs et al., 2003)

See also:

• ICDP-10/08

North America, U.S.A., Arizona, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado Plateau

35° 3' 57'' N, 109° 46' 55'' W (Please scroll down to end of page for more information.)

• not yet determined

• John W. Geissmann, University of New Mexico, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
• Gerhard H. Bachmann, University of Halle-Wittenberg, Institute for Earth Sciences
• Ronald C. Blakey, Northern Arizona University, Department of Geology
• Dennis V. Kent, Rutgers University, Wright Labs, Department of Geological Sciences
• Dennis V. Kent, Columbia University, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Biology and Paleo Environment
• Wolfram M. Kürschner, Utrecht University, Department of Biology, Paleoecology, Institute of Environmental Biology
• Paul E. Olsen, Columbia University, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Geosciences
• Jingeng Sha, Academia Sinica, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology

Biotics , Climate Change , Colorado , Colorado Plateau , CPCP , ICDP-10/08 , Jurassic , Mesozoic , Tectonics , Triassic , U.S.A.

Workshop successfully completed

• http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~polsen/cpcp/CPCP_home_page_general.html

Show in Google Earth: Link

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