Irina Filina

Assistant Professor in the UNL Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

The complex geology of the Tyrrhenian Sea – the insight from the IODP Expedition 402

Tuesday May 14, 2023

12:30pm CST

International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 402 took place from February to April 2024 in the Tyrrhenian Sea, departing from and returning from Naples, Italy. The main scientific objective of the expedition was to recover the basement rocks of the Vavilov Basin and of the two adjacent terraces - Cornaglia and Campania. The terraces are conjugate margins between which a basin was formed as a result of extensional tectonic processes culminating in the exhumation of the mantle. The expedition drilled six sites along two orthogonal transects targeting the transition between the terraces' continental crust to the Vavilov Basin's oceanic domain. The basement rocks recovered from the Vavilov basin revealed that the basement fabric is highly heterogeneous and will allow us to comprehend geological processes associated with mantle uplift, serpentinization, and ultimate unroofing. The sedimentary section above the basement of the Vavilov Basin not only confirms the complex tectonics of this region but also preserves a record of abundant pyroclastic deposits produced by active volcanic centers. The two sites on the Cornaglia and Campania terraces recovered important sedimentary strata comprising evaporites related to the famous Messinian salinity crisis. Irina Filina from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln participated in this expedition. The presentation will provide insight into her experience onboard the legendary JOIDES Resolution drill ship.

Irina Filina is a Geophysicist leading the UNL Geophysics Research Group. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2007 with a PhD in Geophysics. She worked in the petroleum industry for 8 years before joining the University of Nebraska at Lincoln in 2016.