The ROSSLOPE is an Italian Antarctic project approved in the framework of the
PNRA. The investigation of the interactions among marine currents, sea floor
morphology, sediment texture and benthic communities is crucial to understand the
dynamics of depositional and erosive processes on present-day seafloor, and
represents an important key to study the paleo-environmental variation of the
southern antarctic and subantarctic areas.
This project aims to investigate the relation between present and past water mass
circulation from modern and late-Cenozoic sedimentary sequences of the Ross Sea
outer shelf and continental slope of the area of Adare and Central Basins, and the
area to the east of Pennell-Iselin Banks. The study will be performed through the
comparison and integration of data concerning the circulation of the present dense,
cold water masses produced in the Ross Sea (HSSW e ISW), with 1) measurements
of physical-chemical-biotic characteristics of surface sediments (water-sediment
interface) and within the top 5 meters beneath the seafloor, 2) the geo-morphological
features of these areas, 3) benthic acoustic facies typically related both to bottomcurrent
activity (i.e. sediment drifts) and to down-slope mass processes within the
stratigraphic section.
In these areas few and scattered geological, geophysical, oceanographic and
morpho-bathymetric data exist. We propose to study these existing data. The data
base is constituted of previous data of: 1) multibeam surveys collected during PNRA
and USA geophysical cruises 2) single-channel and multichannel Italian and foreign
seismic data available by the Seismic Data Library System 3) PNRA sediment box
cores and cores of which most already studied for other purposes and others yet to
be studied.
Moreover new morpho-bathymetric and sub-bottom acoustic data together with cores
and box cores will be collected. All results will be compared in a multidisciplinary way
with oceanographic knowledge to provide a depositional model of the modern
continental slope processes as a basis for paleoceanographic reconstructions.
