Drilling Projects By
Climate & Ecosystems
Sustainable Georesources
Natural Hazards
World
Geological Time
North and Central America
- Map of North and Central America
- Anadarko Basin (Oklahoma, U.S.A.)
- Bighorn Basin (U.S.A.)
- Blue Hole (Belize)
- Cape Cod (U.S.A.)
- Chesapeake Bay (U.S.A.)
- Chicxulub (Mexico)
- Chicxulub 2 (Mexico)
- Colorado (U.S.A.)
- Colorado 2 (U.S.A.)
- Cornell University (U.S.A.)
- Death Valley (U.S.A.)
- Hawai'i (U.S.A.)
- Koolau (U.S.A.)
- Lake Chalco (Mexico)
- Lake Izabal (Guatemala)
- Lake Petén Itzá (Guatemala)
- Lead (U.S.A.)
- Long Valley (U.S.A.)
- Mallik (Canada)
- Newberry (U.S.A.)
- New Jersey (U.S.A.)
- Nicaragua
- Oklahoma (U.S.A.)
- San Andreas Fault (U.S.A.)
- Sevier Basin (U.S.A.)
- Snake River (U.S.A.)
- Sudbury (Canada)
Cape Cod: Onshore-Offshore Drilling and Sampling along the New England Continental Shelf
to Understand Freshwater Resources
We hypothesize that the rapid incursion of freshwater on the New England continental shelf could have been caused by: (1) meteoric recharge during Pleistocene sea-level lowstands including vertical infiltration of freshwater associated with local flow cells on the shelf; (2) sub-ice-sheet recharge during the last glacial maximum; and/or (3) recharge from pro-glacial lakes. We further hypothesize that the overpressures could be due to: (1) Pleistocene sediment loading; and/or (2) fluid density differences associated with emplacement of a thick freshwater lens over saltwater (analogous to excess pressures in the gas legs of petroleum reservoirs). We argue these different freshwater recharge mechanisms and overpressure models can be distinguished through drilling, coring, logging, and fluid sampling. Noble gas and environmental isotope data are necessary to completely evaluate recharge models.
