The shelf party of the Karpinsky Institute returned from the latest stage of works and analyses interim results

Shelf party members of the Department of regional geoecology and marine geology of the Centre of marine geology, lithogeodynamics and metallogeny of sedimentary basins of the Karpinsky Institute in early July completed the planned cruise in the Kola Bay of the Barents Sea.

Observations were carried out within the framework of the project State Monitoring of the Subsurface State in the Russian Federation in 2023-2025 (onshore-offshore areas of the White, Barents and Baltic Seas).

The purpose of the research is to assess the current state of hazardous exogenous geological processes and forecast its changes on the basis of monitoring observations.

The works under supervision of the party chief Leonid Mikhailovich Budanov were carried out from the boat "Tuman" (meaning Mist) and included side-scan sonar and continuous seismoacoustic profiling surveys along a network of profiles crossing the bay from shore to shore.

The observation network, laid out by the party's leading geologist Andrei Glebovich Grigoriev, was located within the areas with the steepest underwater slopes. It is on them that various gravitational processes such as underwater landslides, rockslides, etc., which are certainly dangerous exogenous geological processes, can potentially occur.

A total of 60 kilometres of continuous seismoacoustic profiling and 20 kilometres of side-scan sonar were carried out at the observation point. Profiling made it possible to record and measure parameters of exogenous geological processes, including anthropogenic ones, which will be recorded in appropriate catalogues and displayed on thematic maps.

This year, the shelf party of the Karpinsky Institute is to make at least three more cruises in the White and Baltic Seas as part of the monitoring project.