On Wednesday, February 1 at 7 pm PCT, ARCS Foundation Oregon is hosting a unique, virtual tour of the JOIDES Resolution, a research vessel located in the Christiana-Santorini-Kolumbo Marine Volcanic Field in Greece. Click here to register for this exclusive ship-to-shore tour. 

The JOIDES Resolution is the temporary home for a team of more than 30 scientists who are studying volcanic cores from this historic eruption site.   

About 800 million people are threatened by volcanic eruptions around the globe: high plumes of ash, ground-hugging flows of hot ash and rock, earthquakes, and associated tsunamis. The Christiana, Santorini, and Kolumbo volcanic group in the Aegean Sea of Greece is particularly hazardous because the volcanoes have produced many eruptions in the past, and some of them were highly explosive. Santorini is an iconic volcano because of its well-known eruption in the Late Bronze Age, and it is a major tourist destination. Much has been learned about the eruption history of the Aegean volcanoes on land, but most of their volcanic products lie on the seafloor, requiring research to move offshore.  

During International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 398, a team of scientists will drill the submarine sequences of muds and volcanic products that fill the marine basins around the volcanoes and inside the Santorini caldera. These will provide a rich record of volcanic activity much older than that known on the islands above sea level. The drilling will access sediments and volcanic layers to depths of several hundred meters below the seabed at six sites, enabling researchers to reconstruct the volcanic history of the region back to 3 million years or more. Post-expedition research will then be able to show the connection of the volcanic history and how the basins formed and whether major events of faulting of the Earth's crust or earthquakes coincided with switching on or shutting down the different volcanic centers and triggering any of their large eruptions in the past. Another aim will be to improve our knowledge and understanding of the Late Bronze Age eruption regarding the amount of magma erupted and possible effects of the eruption on the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete. Scientists will also drill through and sample the products of the submarine volcanoes of Kameni inside the Santorini caldera and Kolumbo outside of it, allowing researchers to reconstruct their histories and better evaluate the hazards posed by underwater explosions and tsunamis. Moreover, the sediment layers of the marine basins have recorded sea level changes and the subsidence of the Aegean region over the last few million years, enabling scientists to reconstruct the change from continental to marine environments with time. Finally, drilling deep inside the Santorini caldera will seek evidence for microbial life below the seafloor and how it may have responded to repeated eruptions of the volcano in the past.