Drilling the Ivrea-Verbano zonE: DIVE 1 – ICDP Operational Report

The Drilling the Ivrea-Verbano zonE (DIVE) project, run as ICDP expedition 5071, aims at studying the lower continental crust (LCC) towards and across the Moho transition zone. The study area provides unique access to a section of the LCC with well-preserved structural relationships. Two drilling targets were selected from this zone for scientific investigations, which, in combination, reveal significant aspects of its geologic history. The goals of the project are primarily petrological-geochemical, geophysical, structural, microbiological, and focusing on natural gases. Two boreholes have been successfully drilled in project DIVE 1: first 5071_1_B near Ornavasso in 2022, then 5071_1_A in Megolo in 2023-2024. This Operational Report summarizes all practical, technical and logistical aspects of how work proceeded on-site, as well as all details of scientific investigations performed at, in and near the boreholes. It further includes aspects on the core description workshops and sampling parties at the core repository. Scientific results are the foci of peer-reviewed papers, nevertheless succinct information and lithological overviews are summarized here. Project news and information released so far to various audiences, especially the general public, are gathered in the section describing our outreach engagement. We draw the readers’ attention to the appendices, supplementary files, and the DIVE 1 Operational dataset also published online (Greenwood et al. 2025), details of which are referred to in this report.