JEDDAH, 12 March 2006 — The two-week international interdisciplinary expedition in the Al-Rub Al-Khali (Empty Quarter), organized by the Saudi Geological Survey (SGS) has yielded some concrete facts as well as a great number of possibilities.

At a presentation of the results of the trip at a press seminar in Jeddah yesterday, the consensus among the expedition members and organizers was that it had laid solid foundations for a great deal of future research into an area which has not been very much scientifically described.

“It has opened doors for the scientific community in the Kingdom,” said Abdul Aziz ibn Laboon, professor of geology at King Saud University. “Universities are actively talking to each other and with the international academics who accompanied us on the trip.”

Professor Robert Rutford from the University of Texas feels that one of the most important results of the joint expedition is that the Empty Quarter seems to be opening up for all to see. “That in itself, for many of us, was an opportunity to look at and see things that we were surprised at.” His field of geomorphology — the study of land-forms — includes sand dunes on which he is a noted authority.

“The classical descriptions of sand dunes in the English-speaking world,” he explained, “do not include many of the forms in the Al-Rub Al Khali.” He said there were entirely new land form types in the area that had simply not been described. “We saw features that are just waiting to be described and contribute to our understanding of the earth.”

He echoed Professor Laboon who said that the two-week trip opened new areas of interdisciplinary cooperation — for example, hydrogeology, archaeology, paleontology, botany and wildlife — that will certainly produce interesting results in the long term.

Professor Rutford touched on tourism possibilities in the area and felt that the trip had presented ideas for the development of a sustainable tourist industry in the area, though that is still in the future.

Describing the expedition as “an outstanding event and one of the four best field trips of my career,” Professor Albert Matter of the University of Bern, Switzerland, said that on the world map of geology the Al-Rub Al-Khali was “a white spot.”

He told the audience that it offered numerous possibilities for future research. He said that parts of Saudi Arabia had been much wetter in early times and there was a thriving Savannah where now there was sand.

“The lakes and water tables that remain should be studied in order to reconstruct the history of the climate and then project it forward to enable us to understand how this area will develop in the future.”

The expedition visited the Hadeeda Craters — site of a famous meteor impact — in the southwestern Al-Rub Al-Khali. Professor Matter said that samples of the meteorite were being sold on the Internet for considerable sums to collectors.

Drawing on his experience with meteor fragments in Oman where he set up a program to recover fragments from the desert, he said that the program had recovered meteorite fragments from the moon and even one from Mars. Collectors though, he said, had robbed the desert of its heritage simply for money and not for scientific research.

The Al-Rub Al-Khali showed indications of considerable groundwater water resources, said Professor Muhammad Sultan of Western Michigan University. “We have to do our homework and to establish its whereabouts and how much we can take out of it so that we can set up sustainable development of this area. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but we are on the right track.”

He hoped that resources and training would be made available for the continuation of desert research, especially as the Al-Rub Al-Khali is one of the biggest continuous deserts in the world.

“Knowledge of the surface features of the area is dismal,” said Dr. John Roobol, a geologist at the SGS and an expert on meteorites. “We need to develop topographic and geological maps for these vast areas that we know so little about.” He said that the SGS had young Saudi geologists who could be trained, “but there are many more fields in natural science than we can cover.”