Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Information

The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) is an international research organization that conducts seagoing expeditions to study the history of the Earth recorded in sediments and rocks beneath the seafloor. IODP builds upon the earlier successes of the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) and Ocean Drilling Program (ODP), which revolutionized understanding of Earth history and global processes through ocean basin exploration. IODP greatly expands the reach of these previous programs by using multiple drilling platforms, including riser, riserless, and mission-specific, to achieve its scientific goals. The IODP science plan outlines three broad scientific themes for IODP: 1) The deep biosphere and the subseafloor ocean; 2) Environmental change, processes and effects; and 3) Solid earth cycles and geodynamics.