The lake drilling project at Lake Hallstatt (Austria) successfully cored 51 m of lake sediments. This was achieved through the novel drilling platform Hipercorig. A core-log seismic correlation was created for the first time of an inner Alpine lake of the Eastern Alps. The sediments cover over 12 000 years before present with 10 (up to 5.1 m thick) instantaneous deposits. Lake Hallstatt is located within an UNESCO World Heritage area which has a rich history of human salt mining.

Lake Victoria is home to the largest human population surrounding any lake in the world and provides critical resources across eastern Africa. It is vital to understand the connection between the lake and climate and how it has changed through its history, but to do so we need a complete archive of the sedimentary record. To evaluate the Lake Victoria basin as a potential drilling target, ~50 scientists met in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in July 2022 for the Lake Victoria Drilling Project workshop.

The Greenland ice sheet is highly sensitive to global warming and a major contributor to sea level rise. In Northeast Greenland, ice–ocean–tectonic interactions are readily observable today, but geological records that illuminate long-term trends are lacking. NorthGreen aims to promote scientific drilling proposals to resolve key scientific questions on past changes in the Northeast Greenland margin that further affected the broader Earth system.

The Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) is the closest geological analog to modern anthropogenic CO₂ emissions, but its causes and the responses remain enigmatic. Coastal plain sediments can resolve this uncertainty, but their discontinuous nature requires numerous sites to constrain events. Workshop participants identified 10 drill sites that target the PETM and other interesting intervals. Our post-drilling research will provide valuable insights into Earth system responses.

Volcanoes where tectonic plates drift apart pose eruption and earthquake hazards. Underground waters are difficult to track. Underground microbial life is probably plentiful but unexplored. Scientists discussed the idea of drilling two boreholes in the Okataina Volcanic Centre, New Zealand, to unravel the connections between volcano, faults, geotherms, and the biosphere, also integrating mātauranga Māori (Indigenous knowledge) to assess hazards and manage resources and microbial ecosystems.