Project REVEAL/CTAM (detailed project description)
Report of the project:
Source: BGR
REVEAL/CTAM (REmote Views and Exploration of Antarctic Lithosphere / Central Transantarctic Mountains) is a joint geophysics/geology project of the Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe (BGR) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) that is realized in the central Transantarctic Mountains between the Nimrod and Beardmore Glaciers including adjacent parts of the polar plateau. For this project, the NSF provided support of research efforts by investigators at the University of Minnesota-Duluth (UMD) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS). On behalf of the BGR, the scientists Dr. Norbert W. Roland and Dr. Detlef Damaske as well as the technicians Dieter Möller and Felix Goldmann participated.
The project took place from 8.12.2003 to 5.2.2004. Operational base for the helicopter-borne and fixed-wing aeromagnetic investigations was a camp on the Marsh Glacier near Moody Nunatak. The aeromagnetic surveying was divided into two primary blocks, a section over the Transantarctic Mountains and a section over the adjacent polar plateau. The mountain block consisted of a rectangular grid of approximately 175 x 100 km size, and was flown by draped helicopter survey at a 2.5-km line spacing (narrowing to 1.25 km over the Miller Range). The plateau block consisted of a similar rectangular grid of approximately 200 x 100 km size, to be flown at a constant elevation by Twin Otter at a 2.5-km line spacing.
The aeromagnetic survey was supported by field geological and geophysical investigations including geological mapping, collection of structural data and collection of ground-based gravity measurements.
The objectives of the joint NSF-BGR project are to:
- characterize the magnetic and gravity signature of East Antarctic crustal basement exposed at the Ross Orogen margin (Nimrod Group),
- extend the magnetic survey westward along a corridor across the polar ice cap in order to image the crust in ice-covered areas,
- obtain magnetic data over the Ross Orogen in order to image the ice-covered boundary between basement and supracrustal rocks, allowing us to better constrain the geometry of fundamental Ross structures,
- use the shape, trends, wavelengths, and amplitudes of magnetic anomalies to define magnetic domains in the shield for continent-scale studies of Precambrian geologic structure and evolution,
- obtain new ground-based geophysical and geological data to be used for checking and correlating with air-borne geophysical data, for characterizing the crustal structure in the Transantarctic Mountains.
