EGU General Assembly 2025 GIFT Workshop

For 2025 we return to Vienna for our 23^rd GIFT workshop ‘Exploring the Sea Floor’ - in the middle of UNESCO’s Ocean Decade.

The Sea Floor (a.k.a. the seabed, ocean floor & ocean bottom) is a complex and intriguing landscape, subject to many of the geological processes we experience on land. While its landscape continues to change, it is worth remembering that as of May 2023, 75% of the world’s sea floor was yet to be mapped, in part because of its inaccessible and challenging nature (remember the lowest point in the ocean is much deeper than the highest point on land).

Although out of sight for so long, the sea floor has the same general characteristics of the continental land with mountains, plains, channels, canyons, ridges, exposed rocks and sediment covered areas. The sea floor allows scientists to draw connections between volcanic, tectonic, hydrothermal, and biological systems in order to better understand the Earth’s remarkable, evolving geography. Leading experts in many of these topics will join us at GIFT and share their knowledge with us across an exciting 2.5 days.

Please see the full brochure (PDF document, 2.2 MB) and the programme overview (PDF document, 139.0 KB) for more details.

Monday, 28 April 2025

• The major stages in the discovery of the sea floor (history of sea floor exploration)
  

  Angelo Carmelenghi (OGS Trieste, Italy)

  • Presentation (PDF document, 8.1 MB)
• The « F.A.M.O.U.S » decade (French American Mid Ocean Undersea Study), 1974-1984, the first-ever marine scientific exploration by manned submersibles of a diverging tectonic plate boundary on a mid-ocean ridge
  

  Jason P. Morgan (Institute of Marine Science, CSIC, Barcelona, Spain)

  • Presentation (PDF document, 3.2 MB)
• IODP School of Rock: An Enduring Legacy from Two Decades of IODP programming and opportunities in the U.S. and beyond
  

  Sharon Cooper (Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University)

  • Presentation (PDF document, 4.7 MB)
• Iceland and the surrounding seafloor, insights into a complex geological system from its origins to the present day
  

  Dr. Rouwen Lehné (Department Geology and Soil, Technische Universität Darmstadt)

  • Presentation (PDF document, 19.1 MB)
• Hands-on activitities: WS 1: Exploring the Ocean Floor: Seeing plate tectonics below the waves
  

  Pete Loader (EGU Geoscience Education Field Officer), Pane Perunovski (EGU Geoscience Education Field Officer), Dragos Tataru (EGU Geoscience Education Field Officer) & Gina P. Correia (EGU Education Committee)

  • Presentation (PDF document, 15.1 MB)

Tuesday, 29 April 2025

• The seafloor life - Biodiversity of hydrothermal vents
  

  Daphne Cuvelier (Institute of Marine Sciences, OKEANOS, University of the Azores)

  • Presentation (PDF document, 9.1 MB)
• Hands-on activitities: WS 3: Maps - Using maps to study the seafloor (paper and digital tools) with geomapapp Presentation of the portal and exercises to calculate seafloor spreading rate (and/or plate motion) from the database
  

  Teresita Gravina & Francesca Funiciello (EGU Education Committee members)

  • Presentation (PDF document, 8.2 MB)
• Hands-on activitities: WS 4: From the seafloor to the classroom - how to engage secondary school students in oceanographic expeditions
  

  Hélder Pereira (Lycée des Maisons d’Education de la Légion d’honneur, Saint Denis, France) & Faustine Gendron (Escola Secundária de Loulé, Algarve, Portugal)

  • Presentation (PDF document, 4.5 MB)
• Exploring the deep oceanic lithosphere on land: a field trip in the Oman ophiolite
  

  Georges Ceulener (Géosciences Environnement Toulouse - CNRS UMR5563/UPS/IRD/CNES)

  • Presentation (PDF document, 28.3 MB)
• Ocean crust in the mountains (ophiolithic series and orogenesis)
  

  Jean Marc Lardeaux (University Cote d’Azur)

  • Presentation (PDF document, 28.8 MB)

Wednesday, 30 April 2025

• When seafloor disappears in the subduction zone - Plate tectonics and the evolution of subduction zones
  

  João C. Duarte (Instituto Dom Luiz (IDL), Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Portugal)

  • Presentation (PDF document, 4.1 MB)
• Formation of oceanic crust and the tectonic and magmatic diversity of mid-ocean ridges
  

  Mathilde Cannat (IPGP, France)

  • Presentation (PDF document, 2.5 MB)
• Formation and preservation of seafloor massive sulfide mineralization along ultraslow spreading ridges: An insight from the Arctic Ocean
  

  Sabina Strmic Palinkas (UiT The Arctic University of Norway and University of Bergen)

  • Presentation (PDF document, 12.5 MB)
• The seafloor mineral resources for tomorrow
  

  Clifford Patten (Institute of Mineralogy and Petrography, Innsbruck University)

  • Presentation (PDF document, 8.8 MB)

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