The current EMODnet-Geology Project started in October 2013 and will run for 3 years, ending in October 2016. The group consists of 36 partners who are able to provide geological information from all of the European seas and, by including organisations from Iceland, Norway and Russia, to expand the information coverage into the North Atlantic Ocean and to the margins of the Arctic (Barents Sea and White Sea). The information that will be included in the project is principally that held by the project partners, although other organisations contribute to the geological mapping objectives in many of the participating countries. The geology data that were compiled in the preparatory phase and in the current project includes:
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Sea-bed substrate (sediment layer at the seafloor);
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Sediment accumulation rate ;
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Sea-floor geology - lithology (bedrock geology beneath the surficial sediment and Quaternary deposits);
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Sea-floor geology - stratigraphy ;
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Coastal behaviour;
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Mineral occurrences (e.g. oil and gas, aggregates, metallic minerals) ;
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Geological events and probabilities (e.g earthquakes, submarine landslides, volcanic centres).
The first year of the project has focused on identifying the geological information that exist in each country represented in the project and constructing a new EMODnet-Geology portal. Initially the priority has been to assess information held by each participating organisation, although as the year has progressed information that is publicly available has been included (e.g see Workpackage 5 report in Section 7). The main highlights of the reporting period have been the progress in assembling sea-bed substrate information in Workpackage 3. Workpackages 4 (Sea-floor geology) and 6 (Minerals) have also made significant progress in assembling information that exists for the European seas. The highlights of the reporting period are:
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assessment of all sea-bed substrate information available at 1:250 000 scale:
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preliminary sea-bed substrate maps; the first to be produced for the European seas at 1:250 000 scale:
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delivery of preliminary sea-bed substrate map to the Seabed Habitats Project in June 2014:
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assessment of pre-Quaternary geology and available scales:
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development of project web portal based on the principles of free and open-source software
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dissemination at national and inernational level and contribution to other European projects (EGDI-Scope) and initiatives (European Continental Shelf Prehistoric Research).