Abstract
How does life look like at the dark bottom of the South China Sea? How and when was the deep basin with its numerous reefs formed? Recently, the dark deep portion of the South China Sea has been vigorously explored on an unprecedented scale in order to answer these questions. The major research program on “Deep Sea Processes and Evolution of the South China Sea” was launched by the National Natural Science Foundation of China in 2011, with participation from more than thirty laboratories in the country. Aside from the numerous research cruises, over 100 mooring systems were deployed to the deep water. Three diving expeditions were implemented with manned or unmanned submersibles, and three ocean drilling expeditions were completed using the US vessel “JOIDES Resolution”. A set of new discoveries from the deep South China Sea will be summarized for the program synthesis in the next spring, ranging from the origin of the marginal sea basin, the unique deep-water circulation, to the deep sand waves and “cold coral gardens”. In this lecture, the speaker will present some of the new discoveries found in the research program.
About the speaker
Prof Pinxian Wang graduated from the Department of Geology at Lomonosov Moscow State University in 1960 and joined the East China Normal University afterwards. In 1972, he moved to Tongji University and is currently the Professor of Marine Geology. He was also the vice chairman of the Division of Earth Sciences in the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Prof Wang’s research focuses on marine micropaleontology and evolution of its environmental pattern for decades and he made creative contributions to the development of marine geology in China. He started the research on the burial of microfossils in China and has developed the research on paleoceanography considerably.
Prof Wang received numerous awards including the Chinese National Natural Science Prize, and the Science and Technology Progress Prize in Earth Sciences by the Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation. He was also elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
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