The MoHole: A Crustal Journey and Mantle Quest, Workshop in Kanazawa, Japan, 3–5 June 2010

Abstract

Drilling an ultra-deep hole in an intact portion of oceanic lithosphere, through the crust to the Mohorovičić discontinuity (the ‘Moho’), and into the uppermost mantle is a long-standing ambition of scientific ocean drilling (Bascom, 1961; Shor, 1985; Ildefonse et al., 2007). It remains essential to answer fundamental questions about the dynamics of the Earth and global elemental cycles. The global system of mid-ocean ridges and the new oceanic lithosphere formed at these spreading centers are the principal pathways for energy and mass exchange between the Earth’s interior, hydrosphere, and biosphere. Bio-geochemical reactions between the oceans and oceanic crust continue from ridge to subduction zone, and the physical and chemical changes to the ocean lithosphere provide inventories of these thermal, chemical, and biological exchanges.The 2010 MoHole workshop in Kanazawa, Japan followed from several recent scientific planning meetings on ocean lithosphere drilling, in particular the Mission Moho Workshop in 2006 (Christie et al., 2006; Ildefonse et al., 2007) and the “Melting, Magma, Fluids and Life” meeting in 2009 (Teagle et al., 2009). Those previous meetings reacheda consensus that a deep hole through a complete section of fast-spread ocean crust is a renewed priority for the ocean lithosphere community. The scientific rationale for drilling a MoHole in fast-spread crust was developed in the workshop reports (available online) and most thoroughly articulated in the 2007 IODP Mission Moho drilling proposal (IODP Prop 719MP; www.missionmoho.org).

Keywords

• MoHole