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1. Introduction.
The meeting was opened by the Chairman, Bob Whitmarsh, at 16.40.
He welcomed all those present especially those who had not attended a previous Steering Committee meeting.
Those present, from 9 countries, were Svenje Mehlert (European Science Foundation),
Jan Inge Faleide (Norway, Principal Member country), Peter Readman (Ireland), Ingo Pecher (New Zealand),
Mingbi Li (PRC, Associate Member country), Yulong Zheng (PRC, Associate Member country),
Weiren Lin (Japan, Principal Member country), Montse Torne (Spain) and César R. Ranero (Germany).
Apologies were received from Tony Watts and Chris Franklin (UK), Julie Morris and Bil Haq (USA),
Phil Symonds and Dietmar Muller (Australia), Jean Mascle (France), Luis Pinheiro (Portugal) and Keith Louden (Canada).
Adoption of Agenda.
The Agenda was circulated and introduced by the Chairman.
The Agenda was accepted with the exception that the ESF report on Euromargins would take place after Item 6 because
Svenje Mehlert had to leave early.
Minutes of the last Meeting.
The Minutes of the meeting held on 10th December, 2003, in San Francisco during the Fall AGU meeting, were
circulated and accepted. There were no comments on the Minutes.
Matters arising.
The Chairman pointed out that there had been a large number of actions on him to do with approaching institutions
that were potential members of InterMARGINS and these would be dealt with later in the Agenda.
Actions on others had been related to events that happened immediately after the last meeting.
An action on Wonn Soh regarding the next location of the InterMARGINS Office would be mentioned later.
The Chairman also mentioned that the US MARGINS Science Plan, mentioned in the Minutes, had now been published
and was available in paper and electronic versions.
He said that this was an interesting and detailed document that deserved study.
Finally the Chairman referred to Dr Keith Louden's comment that in Canada some industry seismic reflection
profiles had been 'lost' because of poor archiving.
He wondered whether any of those present had had similar problems in other countries.
Stuart Henrys had said that no such problems existed in New Zealand.
Dr Faleide reported that there was no problem in Norway; he said that a formal system existed to make
metadata and the original data available on-line to any recognised researcher.
Dr Readman reported that in Ireland data were deposited with the Petroleum Affairs Division
and accessible after 3-5 years.
Finally the Chairman said that he had no direct recent experience in UK but he believed that at least
the metadata for marine seismic lines acquired in UK waters were archived by central government.
The Chairman concluded that Canadian scientists appeared to be in a minority in having trouble with
accessing commercial seismic profiles.
The InterMARGINS web site.
The Chairman began by illustrating recent progress in developing the InterMARGINS web site.
He explained that he had been running the web site himself until August 2003 when David Geddes
joined the InterMARGINS Office specifically to develop the web site.
The first point he made was that visits to the web site had steadily increased since August 2003,
when there had been @15 visits /day, whereas visits had averaged 39/day in recent months.
The second point was that, following comments made to the Steering Committee in December 2002, pages had
been developed for a number of individual countries giving details of involvement in international projects,
national programmes, laboratories working on margins, funded projects and so on.
The Chairman requested those present to give feedback on the usefulness of these pages and on the web
site in general, either now or after they had had time to use the site.
He pointed out that there were special language problems in extracting information from Japanese and
Chinese web sites.
Dr Soh was working on supplying information about Japanese margins research and Dr Mingbi Li had indicated that
he would supply information about Chinese research and researchers.
Dr Faleide reported that the Norwegian national margin programme, Normar, was expecting to open its own web
site in the near future.
In conclusion the Chairman reiterated his request for feedback on the content of the expanded
InterMARGINS web site, particularly for information about cruises in 2004 which the InterMARGINS Office
was hoping to begin to collate in the near future.
He also informed the Committee that the Office planned to add a series of global charts of parameters
such as bathymetry, satellite gravity, age of the oceanic crust etc. and some educational material
describing continental margins in layman's terms to the web site.
Finally, he requested new ideas and suggestions for future developments of the site.
Dr Readman pointed out that he had found the site useful for downloading and printing the
InterMARGINS Newsletter.
The Chairman pointed out that some people were unable to download and print Newsletters in this way.
He considered that it was still useful to publish the Newsletter on paper as had been done for the first
three Newsletters.
Dr Pecher interjected that he that he thought the web site was too structured and had too many layers.
Dr Readman thought that it was important to provide the required information in about three clicks.
The Chairman thanked members for their comments.
An InterMARGINS Workshop.
The Chairman described how the concept of InterMARGINS first sponsored Workshop (named Modelling the
Extensional Deformation of the Lithosphere; IMEDL2004) had been conceived exactly 12 months earlier at a
Steering Committee meeting in Nice.
He gave a summary of the aims, objectives and programme of the Workshop which would take place in Switzerland
from 11-16 July, 2004.
A prime objective was to benchmark software that had been developed to model rifting and margin development.
He referred to generous funding from four sources (NERC/UK, European Science Foundation, NSF/USA and InterMARGINS)
which had enabled the organisers to offer fully funded places to some 45 margins researchers from all over
the world (plus 3 other people who were able to support themselves).
Eventual outputs would be a web site plus a publication of the proceedings.
Dr Readman asked how the Steering Committee had decided whom to invite.
The Chairman replied that this had been done by the three conveners in collaboration with an equal number of
independent researchers.
The Workshop had been advertised in EOS and on the InterMARGINS web site.
He regretted that not all applicants, particularly research students, had been successful.
Dr Pecher asked why there was a limit on numbers.
The Chairman explained that the principal limitation was a practical one related to the number of people that
could be transported on the field trips.
Euromargins.
Dr Mehlert reported that generally all 14 of the new Euromargins projects had now started and the
longest running had been in existence for a year.
At present Euromargins was concentrating on running workshops; three workshops had been convened which had been
organised by Jan-Inge Faleide, Luis Pinheiro and Manuel Fernandez.
Euromargins was also planning a major workshop In Barcelona from 25-28 November 2004 at which all 76 Principal
Investigators would be present plus some postdoctoral scientists and PhD students.
The future of Euromargins, after the end of the current phase in mid-2006/2007, would also be discussed.
The community would have to decide the way forward.
There would not be a second call for Euromargins as had been planned originally.
However, national funding agencies had indicated that they wanted to see a follow-up programme.
This new programme would have some margins-related, even passive margins related, aspect to it.
There would also be a move to attract new member countries such as Ireland and Denmark.
Dr Mehlert added that Euromargins was also planning a big presence at EGU II in Vienna in a year's time.
In answer to a question from the Chairman, Dr Mehlert said that there were no plans to integrate the new programme
with the European Union's (EU's) Framework VII programme.
Dr Faleide added that a workshop was planned in the winter of 2005 to prepare for Framework VII.
Dr Mehlert responded that Framework VII discussions at the present time were on the general structure of the
Programme and not the detailed scientific content.
Dr Torne confirmed that the general principles would be set out in 2005 but the Programme was not due to start until 2007. She expected there to be room for some basic scientific research and margins-related work could be one area that might be supported. A draft she had seen contained integrated projects, centres(?) of excellence and technological platforms, She stated that it had been decided that there will not be a European Research Council which might have supported future research on European margins.
The Chairman concluded with some brief words of explanation, for those present from outside Europe,
about the role of the EU in funding scientific research through Framework Programmes.
Membership status.
The Chairman referred to the several actions on him from the last meeting to approach institutions in a
number of countries regarding their possible membership of InterMARGINS.
1. AUSTRALIA. The Chairman reported that in February he had approached Dietmar Mueller (University of Sydney) and
Phil Symonds (Geoscience Australia).
Both had responded positively. Dr Muller had in fact indicated that Australia might join as an Associate Member
after July 2004 if the AEON (Australian Earth and Ocean Network) Project was funded.
The Chairman commented that Australia's membership would be very appropriate in view of the large amount of
work already carried out on Australia's margins.
2. FRANCE. The Chairman said he had emailed Dr Jean Mascle, Director of the French national programme GDR Marges.
His reply had been rather pessimistic. He had stated that GRD Marges depended on funding from seven partners
some of whom were in the oil business.
It had proved rather difficult to persuade these partners of the benefit of paying an InterMARGINS subscription
and in any event the actual funds available to GDR Marges were quite small (about US$250,000 in 2004).
Nevertheless, Dr Mascle said that personally he was in favour of France joining InterMARGINS and he promised to
persevere with the proposal.
3. IRELAND. The Chairman reported that, on the advice of Dr O'Reilly, he had written in February to
Geoffrey O'Sullivan in the Marine Institute, in Dublin.
The letter had been passed to Mr Gillooly, Director, Ocean Science Services, of the Marine Institute.
In response to a follow up query from the Chairman Fiona Fitzpatrick had recently responded that money was
tight but that the letter had now been passed to the Petroleum Affairs Division (PAD) of the Irish Government.
Dr Readman observed that the PAD really was concerned with collecting industry data and might also not have
much money to spend on an InterMARGINS subscription.
He undertook to follow up the matter with Dr O'Reilly on his return [Action Drs. Readman, O'Reilly].
He added that the Royal Irish Academy and Science Foundation Ireland might also be approached.
The Chairman observed that funds could come from more than one source although eventually InterMARGINS
would want to deal, for membership purposes, with a single organisation.
4. PORTUGAL. The Chairman reported that Dr Pinheiro had hoped to be present but had had to cancel his
trip to Nice at short notice.
The Chairman reported that Dr Pinheiro had asked him to write a letter to the Scientific Council of
the Sea and the Environment in Portugal which had been done in mid-April.
He concluded that, for the moment, InterMARGINS had to await feedback from Portuguese scientists.
5. SPAIN. The Chairman invited Dr Torne to comment on the status of CSIC membership of InterMARGINS.
She began by saying that when she and the Chairman had last discussed this matter in November 2003 she
was quite optimistic that Spain would join as an Associate Member.
She continued that normally the CSIC budget is decided in April/May for the following year but the recent
change of government in Spain in mid-March has upset this arrangement and CSIC is in the middle of a re-organisation.
The Ministry of Science and Technology, which previously was responsible for CSIC, no longer exists and CSIC
has been transferred to a new Ministry of Education and Science.
Dr Torne said she expected to have a firm answer about CSIC membership, probably beginning in January 2005,
in early June [Action Dr Torne].
6. TAIWAN. Dr Mingbi Li mentioned that he had seen a reference to Taiwan joining InterMARGINS in the Minutes of
the last meeting.
He observed that it would be impossible for the PR China and Taiwan to both belong to InterMARGINS because
'Taiwan is a part of China'.
Dr Torne interjected that she understood this was not a problem because members of InterMARGINS were not
there as national representatives but only as representing scientists in their country through the institution
which employed them or the funding organisation which paid the subscription.
The Chairman observed that, as far as he knew this was a hypothetical question at present because he was not
aware of any ongoing discussions with Taiwanese scientists.
In any event he accepted that it was necessary to be careful in presenting information, for example on the
InterMARGINS web site, to show that the membership consisted of organisations and agencies within
each country and not the country itself.
2. Rotation of the InterMARGINS Office.
The Chairman invited Dr Weiren Lin to tell the Committee about the latest discussions in Japan regarding
the possible transfer of the Office to a location in Japan at the end of 2004.
Dr Weiren Lin reported that he had talked to Dr Soh but no decision had been taken yet nor was it known
when any decision might be made.
3. Future Plans.
3.1 The Chairman introduced the item by saying that currently InterMARGINS had a substantial income of
US$60,000 per annum.
In 2004 the income and expenditure are expected to be in balance because of substantial expenditure on the
Workshop in Switzerland and on the salary of the web site manager.
In future, with more members, he expected that InterMARGINS would have substantial funds to spend.
The Chairman noted that funds might be spent on sponsorship, especially of people from developing countries,
on workshops or on publications.
Dr Morris had also suggested, by email, that InterMARGINS might be involved in archiving data from its
programmes around the world but this was not an issue at present as InterMARGINS did not directly fund
any research programmes, although it did gather information (metadata) about margins cruises.
She also suggested that InterMARGINS might support the development of margins science programmes world-wide.
3.2 Dr Morris also drew attention in her email to the well known environmental problems in the USA which
had led to seismic cruises on the R.V. Maurice Ewing being cancelled recently because of the concerns
about seismic noise on marine mammals.
She said that strategies were currently being worked out by the National Science Foundation to cope with the situation.
3.3 The Chairman continued with other topics. He asked for guidance on whether InterMARGINS should collaborate
more with other international programmes or should spend more effort on outreach.
3.4 Dr Mingbi Li mentioned that the PR China would like to hold a workshop in November 2004 or 2005
on the West Pacific margins or on a more limited topic.
The Chairman asked how Dr Li wanted InterMARGINS to be involved.
He said that November was quite short notice for planning purposes and that in the present year
InterMARGINS had spent most of its income.
Dr Li agreed to discuss this further by email with the Chairman.
3.5 Dr Pecher asked when the summer workshop was first publicised.
The Chairman replied that an advertisement was put in EOS in late January 2004.
3.6 Dr Readman asked whether a workshop would be held every year.
The Chairman replied that it depended on demand and on finding a subject of broad interest to the international community. Dr Readman felt that a summer school format that involved more students and junior scientists, similar to ones supported by UNESCO, would be a useful model to investigate; a workshop could also be included. The Chairman concurred that this was an interesting concept but it was also important to find an attractive topic to push the idea forward. The topic had to be a generic study for it to be supported by InterMARGINS. Dr Readman suggested that more smaller conferences, without full sponsorship by InterMARGINS, might also be possible. The Chairman pointed out that the workshop in Switzerland followed this model in that funds were acquired from several sources.
3.7 The Chairman noted that although InterMARGINS offered sponsorship on its web site the take up had been very small.
Dr Readman said it might be a matter of advertising and queried how many people used the web site.
The Chairman noted that currently 39 people visited the web site per day.
Dr Pecher thought that it might be more valuable to contact University Departments directly in developing countries.
The Chairman wondered whether UNESCO might be able to help.
4. National Reports
4.1 JAPAN. The Chairman noted that the member from Japan, Dr Wonn Soh, although absent, had table a report;
a copy had been given to those present.
The Chairman summarised the report by saying that the operation of research cruises and ships in Japan had
changed in the last 6 months; JAMSTEC had taken over the functions previously carried out by the Ocean Research
Institute in the University of Tokyo.
The Shinkai 2000 submersible was no longer available.
During 2004 the Shinkai 6500 submersible was going to visit the Nankai Trough, the Izu-Bonin Arc and the Lau Basin.
Two other cruises were also planned in the Nankai Trough area to study heat flow and mud volcanoes and a seismic
cruise was going to investigate the Ontong-Java Plateau.
4.2 NORWAY. Dr Faleide reported that most activity in Norway was related to six or seven of the 14 funded
Euromargins projects.
Norwegian scientists are also involved in two projects to do with the rifting and break-up of rifted
volcanic margins.
Dr Faleide noted that he had run a Euromargins workshop in Oslo in early April along much the same lines as
the InterMARGINS workshop that was going to be held in July.
He said that on the first day there had been presentations by modellers followed, on the second day, by discussion
of the observational constraints on modelling and then by a discussion on future collaboration among those working
offshore Greenland and Norway.
Eventually a report of the workshop will be published.
Dr Faleide added that the new NORMAR web site would be put up after a meeting of the relevant Research Council
Committee in late May.
He also noted that a new petroleum research programme had been started in Norway in 2004 called Petromax.
He continued that a first round of proposals had been submitted by 15 February with proposals from
academia and jointly with industry; there would be a second call for proposals in September-October 2004.
Successful projects would be known in the summer.
Finally, Dr Faleide stated that there is increasing interest in studying Arctic margins.
A drilling proposal had been submitted to IODP with German colleagues to drill north of Svalbad.
He noted that there was a lot of activity on the margin of NE Greenland.
The amount of data off that margin had been tripled in the last three years thanks to the efforts of the
R.V. Polarstern.
The ice conditions in 2003 had been very good and it had been possible to collect a grid of seismic
lines and four wide-angle lines across the margin.
The Chairman thanked Dr Faleide and commented that he was very interested to see the results of the Oslo workshop.
He commented that modelling the Greenland-Norway pair of conjugate margins was probably more difficult than
modelling the west Iberia-Newfoundland pair, which would be done at the InterMARGINS Workshop, because of the
extra complication of volcanism at the former margins.
Dr Faleide concurred, noting that even imaging the structures underneath the lava flows was more difficult
off Greenland and Norway.
4.3 USA. The Chairman noted that the member from the USA, Dr Julie Morris, although absent, had tabled
a report a copy of which had been given to those present.
In a recent funding round, 26 proposals had been submitted 10 of which had been recommended for funding.
There had been a rapid response to submarine gas, fluid and magma venting from a submarine volcano in the Marianas Arc.
Dr Morris noted that MARGINS' 5-year review was taking place the following day which was why she and her
MARGINS colleagues were regrettably unable to be present in Nice.
The Director of NSF's Ocean Sciences Division had addressed the MARGINS Steering Committee at their Spring meeting
about the problem of cetaceans and sound in the sea.
A group of MARGINS scientists had visited Egypt (UAR) in March and had had a very successful meeting to
discuss preparations for a cruise in the northern Red Sea to investigate the initiation of rifting in that area.
The report also noted the setting up of a new database of MARGINS data which would be demonstrated at the 2004
Fall AGU meeting. The first two of the planned series of MARGINS publications had been published and another was
in press. The Chairman noted that MARGINS had set up a prize for outstanding student presentations at the Fall
AGU meting; presentations could be by a student from any country but had to relate to the objectives of US MARGINS.
Finally the Chairman noted the new MARGINS Education and Public Outreach Implementation initiative; a proposal
was being written to hold a discussion workshop on the subject in early winter 2005.
4.4 Ireland. Dr Readman stated that there was little to add to the recent report on margins research in Ireland
in InterMARGINS Newsletter No. 3.
He said that the interpretation of the results of the deep seismic experiment HADES was now well underway;
the three people working on the data (two postdocs and one PhD student) have produced a preliminary model.
Another postdoc from Japan was due to start work in June on the Cosmogrid project investigating rheological
aspects of rifting.
Dr Readman also mentioned that he believed that the Petroleum Affairs Division and GSI were going to conduct
a high resolution survey within Hatton Basin later in the year and that Prof. Tim Reston (IfM/Geomar) was
planning to conduct a seismic experiment in the Porcupine Basin in May.
Dr Readman and colleagues were going to independently record some of the shots on land; two other colleagues would
be on board the IfM/Geomar research vessel.
4.5 New Zealand. Dr Pecher began by reminding the Committee of the Hikarangi margin transect conducted in 2001.
He estimated that it would take at least another 2-3 years before funds would be available to conduct the next
planned OBS transect across the Havre Trough, normal to the trench, to study lithospheric roll-back of the north
side of North Island.
He and his colleagues wanted to encourage international collaboration.
The Chairman responded by saying that this was something that InterMARGINS would be keen to help with.
He proposed that Dr Pecher and colleagues write a short article for the next InterMARGINS Newsletter about their
project.
Dr Pecher agreed to talk to Dr Henrys about this [Action Dr Pecher].
Dr Pecher continued by mentioning that another IGNS cruise to the Ritchie Ridge off the east coast of New Zealand
had a high probability of taking place over 10 days in 2005/2006.
He then described two ongoing projects.
One, a NIWA (National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research) project, in collaboration with the
French 'GDR Marges' margins programme, to study slope instability off the east coast of North Island and the
other, involvement in the Source-to-Sink US MARGINS Programme, which had a project to study sediments in the
Waipaoa(?) river area.
4.6 PR China. Dr Mingbi Li outlined the status of current projects in China.
He said that the principal research activities on continental margins are funded by the government.
One major project was 'Critical Issues for the evolution of the Chinese Marginal Sea and the Formation of
Major Natural Resources (2000-2005)' and this was funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology.
Other projects are funded by the National Natural Science Foundation.
The projects emphasise the margins of the East China Sea and the South China Sea; there was interest in the history
of the rifted margins and the subsequent spreading in the South China Sea.
Several cruises in the South China Sea and the East China Sea have been carried out; the surveys included the
acquisition of multi-channel seismic reflection profiles, multi-beam bathymetry, gravity and magnetic profiles and
sediment samples. The recent researches mainly include the use of satellite altimetry to generate gravity measurements
which were being used to study the deep structure of the rifted margins offshore China, the use of multibeam
bathymetry, in combination with other geophysical observations, to study the rifting history of the margins and the
use of the tomography of China's marginal seas and adjacent areas.
Finally, Dr Li mentioned studies of gas hydrates in the South China Sea and the East China Sea where bottom
simulating reflectors had been found. He ended by saying that in future China wished to have more co-operation
with scientists in other countries, particularly those from other member countries of InterMARGINS.
Such co-operation could include the exchange of students.
5. Any other business.
There was no other business.
6.Date of the next Meeting.
The Chairman noted that the next Steering Committee meeting would be in San Francisco during the Fall AGU
meeting (13-17 December, 2004), probably on Wednesday 15th December.
He said he would confirm the date later by email.
7. Closure of the meeting.
The Chairman closed the meeting around 18.30.
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