1998 Reports

3. Site 1071

Shipboard Scientific Party

Site 1071 is one of two sites approved for JOIDES Resolution drilling on the New Jersey continental shelf; these sites form part of a transect of holes from the slope (ODP Leg 150) to coastal outcrops (150X and 174AX) that constitute the Mid-Atlantic Sea-level Transect. The primary goals of the transect are (1) to date sequence boundaries of Oligocene to Holocene age and compare this stratigraphic record with the timing of glacial-eustatic changes inferred from deep-sea d18O variations; (2) to place constraints on the amplitudes and rates of sea-level change that may have been responsible for unconformity development; (3) to assess the relationships between depositional facies and sequence architecture; and (4) to provide a baseline for future scientific ocean drilling that will address the effects and timing of sea-level changes on this and other passive margins. Site 1071 provides information primarily about late middle Miocene and younger sequences at locations landward of their respective rollovers/breakpoints, the positions at which each sequence boundary steepens seaward into a clinoform.