Lithoprobe was a Canadian national geoscience research project funded by the

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC; french: Conseil de recherches en sciences naturelles et en génie du Canada, CRSNG) is the major federal agency responsible for funding natural sciences and engineering rese ...

from 1984 to 2005, and one of the largest geoscientific research programs in Canadian history. The project aimed to research and map the

lithosphere A lithosphere () is the rigid, outermost rocky shell of a terrestrial planet or natural satellite. On Earth, it is composed of the crust and the portion of the upper mantle that behaves elastically on time scales of up to thousands of years ...

structure and composition, and its findings were used by scientists as well as petroleum and mining companies. By the end of the project, Lithoprobe had employed more than 1,000 scientists. The name "Lithoprobe" is derived from "probing the lithosphere". The project used 20-tonne trucks, called vibroseis trucks and nicknamed "dancing elephants," that forced seismic waves beneath the Earth to generate geological and historical data, allowing researchers to glean information from at least 80 kilometers beneath the Earth's surface.

History

The concept of Lithoprobe was proposed at an 1981 meeting sponsored by Canada's Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and the project itself launched in 1984. It was jointly funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Geological Survey of Canada.

Notable contributors

Richard Lee Armstrong Richard Lee Armstrong (August 4, 1937 – August 9, 1991) was an American/Canadian scientist who was an expert in the fields of radiogenic isotope geochemistry and geochronology, geochemical evolution of the earth, geology of the American C ...

* Ronald M. Clowes, Director (1987) *

Hu Gabrielse Hubert Gabrielse (born March 1, 1926) is a Canadian retired geologist who formerly worked for the Geological Survey of Canada. He devoted much of his more than 50 years in geosciences to regional geological mapping in the northern Cordillera of ...

* Charlotte E. Keen *

Thomas Edvard Krogh Thomas Edvard ''"Tom"'' Krogh, FRSC (1936 – April 29, 2008) was a geochronologist and a former curator for the Royal Ontario Museum. He revolutionized the technique of radiometric uranium-lead dating with the development of new laborator ...

(1991–1996) *

James Monger James (Jim) W.H. Monger is an emeritus scientist of the Geological Survey of Canada and a world leader in the application of plate tectonics to the study of mountain chain formation. Education Monger obtained his BSc at the University of Readin ...

John Oliver Wheeler John Oliver Wheeler (19 December 1924 – 24 May 2015) was a Canadian geologist, who spent most of his career as a research scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada. Family Wheeler came from a family of surveyors. His father, Sir Edward Oli ...

, lobbied for establishment of the project, chairman of steering committee (two years) * Harold Williams

References

External links

GSA Today volume 21 Issue 6 (June 2011): The big picture: A lithospheric cross section of the North American continent
Geology organizations Scientific organizations based in Canada {{Canada-org-stub