Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) and ODP coring has provided an unparalleled database from the oceans, recovering strata and hard rocks that were not accessible to geologists with hammer and Brunton. The sediments and rocks obtained by DSDP and ODP led to a revolution in how we view tectonics and the evolution of the planet. ODP has provided centralized core libraries and databases and coordinated publications and represents one of the finest examples of international cooperation in science. In comparison, continental drilling is still in its infancy. Outcrops and subsurface samples are more accessible to geologists onshore, and their study has not generally required large international programs like ODP. However, outcrop sections or discontinuously sampled oil or water wells are poor substitutes for continuous cores. Both national (NSF Continental Dynamics Program) and international (ICDP) efforts are now drilling the continents in an integrated fashion, providing the continuous cores and logs that scientists need to address major scientific themes.
In this context, drilling during Legs 150X and 174AX has provided cutting-edge integration of ODP and onshore drilling efforts, coordinated on the themes of global sea-level change and sequence architecture (Miller and Mountain, 1994; Christie-Blick and Austin, 2002). In this contribution, we have shown that onshore drilling can rival the best of ODP drilling in the ocean for continuous records of major global events. For example, during Leg 171B the Blake Nose was drilled in search of continuous Cretaceous to Paleogene records and spectacular records of the C/T, K/T, and PETM events were obtained (Norris, Kroon, Klaus, et al., 1998). We show here that drilling at Bass River and Ancora has provided equally spectacular records of these events. It must be noted that drilling the oceans and continents are complementary: the deep-sea record is generally superior for long, continuous time series and contains a better record of global reservoirs of carbon, whereas the onshore records reflect the direct effects of sea-level change and continental climates.
Future drilling efforts must continue to integrate the strengths of deep ocean drilling (such as planned for the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program [IODP]) and coordinated onshore efforts. Several major onshore ICDP drilling projects have potential ties to IODP, including the Hawaii Drilling Project (Hawaii Scientific Drilling Project, 2001), the Gulf of Corinth (www.icdp-online.de/html/sites/corinth/news/news.html), and Chicxulub (www.icdp-online.de/html/sites/chicxulub/news/20011203-Chicxulub_en.html). In addition, various ICDP lake drilling efforts (Titicaca, Malawi, Bosumptwi, and El'gygytgyn; www.icdp-online.de) have direct ties to global change studies of the global paleoceanographic array being constructed by ODP and future IODP drilling.
Future drilling in NJ is also being planned as a joint ICDP/IODP effort on the inner continental shelf of NJ (Sites MAT1-MAT3 in Fig. F1) to evaluate the response of passive continental margin stratigraphic architecture to changes in global sea level, sediment supply, and regional tectonics. This drilling project will be the culmination of the NJ/Mid-Atlantic Sea-Level Transect strategy developed and endorsed by several advisory and review bodies over the last decade. Integration of borehole records (lithofacies, biofacies, and logs) with seismic profiles will provide the temporal and spatial control needed to evaluate the response and to perform two-dimensional backstripping, yielding eustatic estimates that can be compared with other eustatic proxies. Prior MAT drilling has focused on the NJ slope (ODP Legs 150 and 174A), outer shelf (ODP Leg 174A), and onshore (ODP Legs 150X and 174AX). Collectively, these efforts have provided ages of sequence boundaries and have tied each to the oxygen isotopic proxy of glacioeustasy, yet have fallen short of the ultimate objectives because facies that register the most sensitive record of sea-level change, the paleoinner shelf, have not been continuously sampled. Funds will be partially provided ICDP, and this project will be the first to unite ICDP and ODP in a cooperative international effort, forging new alliances for future drilling.