People involved collaborators

Find out who collaborates with the Integrated Ocean Drilling Programme, including staff from the University.

Rob McKay in front of the Drill mast

Collaborators

The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program is a high-profile international scientific research collaboration supported by 24 countries. New Zealand joined IODP through the Australia-NZ IODP consortium membership (ANZIC).

Six research institutions currently contribute to the annual IODP membership fee. Alongside Victoria University of Wellington, these include:

GNS Science
University of Otago
Researchers at GNS
University of Auckland
University of Canterbury
University of Waikato

Starting in August 2017, the IODP’s research ship JOIDES Resolution will be based in New Zealand for a year to undertake five scientific expeditions.

Researchers from Victoria University of Wellington will lead two of the expeditions, with participants likely to include scientists from GNS Science, NIWA and New Zealand universities, and experts from around the world.

Rupert Sutherland from the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences is the project lead on an expedition near the Lord Howe Rise west of New Zealand in the Tasman Sea, and Rob McKay from the Antarctic Research Centre will lead the other expedition in Antarctica’s Ross Sea.

“We’re investigating past ice sheet behaviour in the Ross Sea,” he says. “By recovering geological data from beneath the seafloor off the Ross Ice Shelf, we want to understand how the West Antarctic ice sheets have behaved during the past twenty million years, and how changes in the ocean next to this massive ice sheet may have driven ice sheet collapses resulting in several metres of sea level rise.”

For more information contact Robert McKay