About Qingdao Institute of Marine Geology

Qingdao Institute of Marine Geology

The Qingdao Institute of Marine Geology is a marine geology institute of the China Geological Survey (CGS), under China's Ministry of Natural Resources, based in Qingdao, Shandong Province. It leads the CGS Coastal Zone and Continental Shelf Geological Research Center, hosts the Ministry of Natural Resources Key Laboratory of Gas Hydrate, and was a lead unit in the 1:100,000-scale marine regional geological survey programme that achieved full coverage of China's jurisdictional seas. The institute also co-sponsored the national marine science laboratory founded in Qingdao in 2000, within which it is responsible for the marine mineral resources assessment laboratory, and it operates the research vessel Haiyang Dizhi 9.

Position within the China Geological Survey

The institute works within the China Geological Survey, the national geological survey organisation under the Ministry of Natural Resources — formerly the Ministry of Land and Resources, under whose name the institute's earlier English-language pages were published. Its published address is in Qingdao under postcode 266071. As one of the CGS's specialist marine institutes, it conducts survey and research on the geology of China's coastal zones and continental shelves, including regional geology and tectonics, the geological evolution of coastal zones and shelves and their environmental and resource responses, the mineral resources geology of those areas, and the survey techniques and methods used to study them.

The Coastal Zone and Continental Shelf Geological Research Center

The institute hosts the Coastal Zone and Continental Shelf Geological Research Center of the China Geological Survey, described as one of the first strategy-oriented centres under the CGS. The centre is responsible for the planning and implementation of geological research in coastal areas and on continental shelves, and for providing technical support for coastal zone management at ministerial and department levels. It integrates and promotes the achievements of coastal zone and continental shelf investigations, carries out research on basic issues in marine geological studies, conducts strategic studies, and provides working guidance, standards, specifications and technical instructions for coastal zone geological investigation and research. It also organises on-the-job training and promotes international cooperation and academic exchanges in its field.

Full coverage: the 1:100,000 marine regional geological survey

The institute was a lead unit in one of the largest marine mapping efforts in China's history. According to Zhang Yong, chief expert of the Marine Basic Geological Survey Project at the China Geological Survey and deputy chief engineer at the Qingdao Institute of Marine Geology, China's roughly three million square kilometres of jurisdictional seas divide, under international standard mapping, into 20 standard 1:100,000-scale map sheets. Survey work on the demonstration sheet for the Nantong area began in 1999, using advanced geological and geophysical survey equipment, testing methods and analytical instruments to obtain large volumes of field measurement, laboratory analysis and comprehensive research data. After all 20 sheets were completed, the survey teams integrated the geological, geophysical, geochemical and remote-sensing data into the first set of comprehensive findings based on measured data fully reflecting the geological conditions of China's jurisdictional seas: the first generation of 1:100,000 marine regional geological series maps, the first 1:100,000 marine regional geological database, and the first 1:100,000 marine regional geological report. The results were released at the First Marine Regional Geological Survey Conference held in Qingdao, and China is now accelerating follow-on 1:25,000-scale marine regional geological surveys.

Coastal geological work and its development

A 2024 review of the institute's coastal work, published in Marine Geology & Quaternary Geology by Chen Bin, Xu Gang, Zhou Liangyong and colleagues, records that coastal geological work at the institute has passed through three stages — initial development, rapid development and vigorous development — always guided by support for national economic and social development needs. As one of the main leading units of the coastal zone work of the China Geological Survey, the institute has organised and implemented coastal geological surveys and mappings at different scales, especially in Liaodong Bay, the western coast of Bohai Bay, the Yellow River Delta, Laizhou Bay, the Shandong Peninsula, the Jiangsu coast, the Yangtze River Delta, and the coasts of Fujian and Zhejiang provinces. The review argues that this work has greatly improved the level of coastal geological survey in China and should in the new era be matched by stronger scientific and technological innovation, a comprehensive geological monitoring system for national coastal areas, and higher levels of public-welfare service.

Gas hydrate and marine mineral resources research

The institute hosts the Ministry of Natural Resources Key Laboratory of Gas Hydrate, anchoring its role in research on the ice-like methane deposits found beneath the seabed. Its mineral-resources work is also embedded in Qingdao's national marine laboratory: the institute is responsible for the construction of the marine mineral resources assessment and survey technology laboratory and the simulation and research platform for deep-sea mineralization. The assessment laboratory investigates the metallogenic conditions, accumulation mechanism, occurrence and distribution patterns of marine mineral resources, and develops a marine resources evaluation system and survey technology with independent intellectual property rights, providing technical support for the sustainable development of the country's marine mineral resources and energy. The deep-sea mineralization platform provides facilities for system simulation of deep-sea mineralization and technical support for studying deep-sea resource accumulation mechanisms, as a collaborative innovation platform for the investigation, research and evaluation of deep-sea mineral resources.

Co-sponsor of the Qingdao national marine science laboratory

In 2000 the institute co-sponsored the founding of Qingdao's national marine science laboratory together with Ocean University of China, the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the First Institute of Oceanography of the State Oceanic Administration, and the Yellow Sea Fisheries Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences. The laboratory is a national marine science and technology innovation platform co-established by the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Land and Resources, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Shandong provincial government and the Qingdao municipal government, with support from marine science institutions across China. Its plan envisaged eight functional laboratories, six research platforms and three technical support systems, with the Qingdao Institute of Marine Geology responsible for the marine mineral resources components described above.

Research vessel Haiyang Dizhi 9

The institute owns the 4,350-ton research vessel Haiyang Dizhi 9, commissioned in late 2017. A China Geological Survey official described it, at the completion of its first expeditions, as the only Chinese ship able to carry out seismic, geological and geophysical study simultaneously. The vessel finished its maiden expedition in December 2018. Together with its sister CGS vessels Haiyang Dizhi 8 and Haiyang Dizhi 10 — all designed and built in China — it marked a step in the modernisation of the survey fleet, optimising the functional complementarity of the research ships and fixed-wing aircraft used in marine exploration and placing China, in the official's words, in the first echelon internationally in marine geology, geophysics and drilling research capability.

Applied research: hazards and coastal environments

The institute's applied output ranges from hazard assessment to ecosystem monitoring. A study of potential geological hazards offshore Qingdao, published in China Geology in 2019, drew on some 2,800 kilometres of sub-bottom profile data together with side-scan sonar and single-channel seismic data acquired by the institute since 2009. It classified the primary hazard factors as active faults, buried palaeo-channels, shallow gas, irregular bedrock, eroded gullies, estuary deltas, tidal sand ridges and seawater intrusion, and identified three north-east-trending active faults in the single-channel seismic data, the longest of them 70 kilometres long. Institute researchers have also tracked the evolution of seagrass beds in Sanggou Bay between 1985 and 2022, combining remote-sensing indexes with historical survey data — work carried out under the institute's Research Center of Coastal Zone Geology and Continental Shelf Geology.

International cooperation

The institute's coastal centre reports wide cooperation and exchanges with the Netherlands, the United States, Canada, Japan, Korea, Germany, France, Denmark and Italy, and with the Coordinating Committee for Geoscience Programmes in East and Southeast Asia (CCOP), including joint technical training of personnel. In 2008 the Sino-Dutch Coastal Geology Research Center was established together with the Netherlands Geological Survey. Named cooperative projects include the China-Netherlands "Marine and coastal geosciences cooperation" project of 2006–2008, China-Japan projects on Quaternary coastal environmental evolution for 2008–2010 and 2011–2015, a China-United States project on carbon sequestration capacity evaluation in coastal wetlands for 2012–2015, a China-Canada gas hydrate research project for 2010–2013, and a China-Korea project on Quaternary geology and geo-environmental changes in the South Yellow Sea.