{ "currentVersion": 10.41, "id": 7, "name": "New England Shelf Hydrogeology Expedition 2025", "type": "Feature Layer", "description": "This map shows the proposed sampling locations for the New England Shelf Hydrogeology Expedition - an investigation to be funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and International Ocean Drilling Programme to understand the sources, distribution, and movement of freshwater beneath the seafloor offshore Massachusetts. Click each point for more information about the sampling at that location.\n
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\nThe Expedition has been in the planning phases for nearly 20 years by an interdisciplinary team that includes researchers from the University of Massachusetts, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, USGS Coastal and Marine Science Center, and others. The research plan leverages information from several previous surveys on the Atlantic continental shelf beginning in the 1970s to characterize sediments below the seafloor and obtain samples using drilling and coring.\n
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\nThis study will use a technique called wireline coring, which encompasses a suite of coring tools, to obtain intact cores of sediment up to 550 meters long at 3-4 locations chosen to help constrain the depth and distance from shore of freshwater saturated sediments. The cores will be analyzed to understand the age and chemical composition of freshwater, which can be used to infer source(s), as well as the microbial diversity and activity within the sediments. It is estimated that the New England shelf may contain 1300 cubic km of freshwater; for perspective, the City of New York uses 1.5 cubic km of freshwater per year. Aquifers like the New England shelf could be used in the future as water reserves for densely populated nearshore regions. Offshore freshwater sources occur in many other places globally. The northeast coast of the U.S. is perhaps the best understood example of an offshore freshwater system.\n
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\nResearch activities would include:\n