High resolution aeromagnetic line data in the Ross Sea Rift collected for the ANDRILL pre-site survey (2008-09 season)

A high resolution survey was flown opportunistically by BAS at the end of the AGAP aerogeophysical campaign during the 2008-09 Antarctic field season with NSF support from McMurdo. The main purpose was to collect data on the ice shelf for a radar pre-site survey for a major planned international ANDRILL drilling campaign at Coulman High. Due to lack of appropriate funding levels from several countries this ANDRILL drilling project has been postponed (https://www.icdp-online.org/projects/world/antarctica/coulman-high/) but the site remains nevertheless a potentially interesting target for future geoscience studies. The Coulman High project aimed to explore the range of paleo-environments, ecosystems and tectonic events that affected the Ross Sea region as it transitioned from the warm, high-CO2 Greenhouse world typical of the Eocene into the lower-CO2 and highly variable Icehouse conditions of the Oligocene and early Miocene. The aeromagnetic data released here can be used together with more extensive pre-existing international datasets to help study rift-related magmatism, faulting and sedimentary basins in the region.