The Bengal Fan

Deep sea fans can be challenging places to work from both a technical perspective (e.g. coring technology) and stratigraphic perspective (e.g. complex depositional systems).  So, we were thrilled to participate in IODP Expedition 354 which drilled a 320 km transect across the Bengal Fan at 8^o N to study the uplift of the Himalaya, history of the regional monsoon, and fan depositional patterns.  Reversal magnetostratigraphy proved to be a useful tool for correlating sites along the transect, as the lithostratigraphy at any one site largely reflects local depositional processes and proximity to the active channel levee system.  Post-cruise, the P-mag lab is investigating the use of relative (geomagnetic) paleointensity (RPI) as a stratigraphic tool to improve these correlations during the Brunhes chron (~780 – present) where no reversals are present.

The expeditions proceedings are now available and we encourage you to check them out and learn more about our initial results.  Expedition education and outreach specialists, Lisa Strong and Diane Hanano, created a few education videos related to the expedition, including videos on ‘Turbidites’ and ‘Source to Sink,’ that are great to watch and use as educational tools.