The first Quaternary map of an Irish offshore region: the Porcupine Bank, West of Ireland

Thursday, November 17, 2016 - 16:00 to 17:30
Rocque Lab, Ground Floor, Rhetoric House, South Campus, Maynooth University

Dr Benjamin Thébaudeau, Postdoctoral Researcher, Irish Climate Analysis and Research Unit (ICARUS) will give a talk titled "Mapping the Porcupine Bank and reconstructing its past".

The Porcupine Bank's location on the north eastern fringe of the Atlantic Ocean, in a critical position between the shelf edge and the main land and along the line of the Polar Front, means it may contain significant indications of glacial/interglacial changes in northern hemisphere climate and in North Atlantic Ocean circulation.  But it also means that it consists of strategically important marine environments with very likely future developmental pressures.  Peer-reviewed publications on the geology of the Bank are very limited and this current state of knowledge will hamper any marine ecosystem research and protection.  This talk will describe the results of a research project aiming at filling the gap of our understanding of the region's seabed, shallow geology and
subseabed resources and characteristics.  Mapping of the seabed was undertaken as an added value to the Irish National Seabed Survey which still exists in the form of INFOMAR.  This work used multibeam high resolution bathymetry and backscatter data as well the complete list of known seabed samples to characterise the seabed sediment type and identify geomorphological features.  New geological mapping of the Quaternary shallow stratigraphy of the bank was undertaken using 2D seismic from research cruise and legacy industry datasets as well as sub bottom profiler data collected at a high density correlated with recently collected vibro-cores and oil and gas exploration wells and shallow boreholes.  The seismic units (some correlated to groundtruthing) are consistently described and a regional map built.