Integrated Ocean Drilling Program

The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) is an international marine research program. The program uses heavy drilling equipment mounted aboard ships to monitor and sample sub-seafloor environments. With this research, the IODP documents environmental change, Earth processes and effects, the biosphere, solid earth cycles, and geodynamics.

Scope

The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) brings together hundreds of scientists from different countries and scientific disciplines to conduct investigations of the Earth deep below the sea-floor. IODP gives scientists the opportunity to:

1. recover geological records and rock samples;
2. investigate and document ocean- and climate-change through time;
3. explore the presence of primitive life below the seafloor;
4. verify remote, near-seafloor observatories;
5. gain understanding of how tectonic plates move and recycle themselves into the deep mantle

Focus on Earth

IODP was conceived in 2003 as a 10-year Earth science and research program. IODP scientists are drawn from universities and institutes located all across its member countries. Two previous scientific ocean drilling programs, Deep Sea Drilling Project and Ocean Drilling Program, generated abundant information about Earth’s dynamic nature including tectonic processes, ocean circulation, climate change, continental rifting, and ocean basin formation. Today, scientific ocean drilling continues to be a...
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