The Belgica Mound Drift is located in the vicinity of cold-water coral mounds in the Porcupine Basin, offshore Ireland. They are both located in a zone which currently is dominated by the tidally driven variability of the Mediterranean Outflow Water. This project aims to reconstruct (a) the present, (b) the "recent" (Holocene - Last Glacial Maximum) and (c) the past (Quaternary) the physical and chemical properties of the contemporaneous bottom water, in order to assess the spatial and temporal variability of the bottom currents.

This project will be carried out on shallow cores and deep IODP boreholes, of which samples will be analysed for their bottom water temperatures using the "clumped" isotope technique, in collaboration with VUB (S. Goderis). Other techniques (CT scanning, grainsize analysis, XRF core scanning) will give insight in the bottom current variability. In parallel, a relative and absolute chronostratigraphic framework will be constructed.