|
The
Curators of Marine Geological Samples group convened at the College of
Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, during September
18-20, 2000. The fourteen curators who attended represented repositories
at the Ocean Drilling Program, University of Rhode Island, Oregon State
University, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of Minnesota,
Geological Survey of Canada, British Ocean Sediment Core Repository, and
the US National Geophysical Data Center/World Data Center for Marine Geology
& Geophysics, Boulder.
Attendees exchanged information about
the history and development of their collections, existing facilities and
equipment, types of collections and regions from which they were amassed,
staffing and funding sources, types of data routinely collected, development
and access to databases, and educational outreach programs. Common themes
of the discussions included shortage of space for future acquisitions and
lack of personnel as a result of limited budgets. Frustration was expressed
with the variable quality of descriptions returned from cruises.
Discussions at this meeting and
the previous meeting in 1998 suggested that it would be useful to set up
a curatorial reference website on core and sediment description, with the
ultimate aim of producing a training CD-ROM - an interactive guide to deep
sea sediments and their practical description. Guy Rothwell, BOSCOR, volunteered
to co-ordinate and host this site (see related article, Seabed NewsIssue
2).
Doug Schurrenberger, Limnological Research
Center, University of Minnesota, reported on the initial test of the drilling
rig GLAD800. The goal of the GLAD (Global Lake Drilling) program is to
obtain long continental records. GLAD1 took place during the summer of
2000 at Great Salt Lake, Utah and Bear Lake, Utah. About 600m of core was
acquired during the testing program. The deepest hole in Great Salt Lake,
which has a maximum water depth of 9m, was 120.01m. A 120m core was also
drilled from Bear Lake, which has a maximum depth of 80m.
It was suggested that the MST data
logger is an essential tool for determining whether whole core coverage
in the borehole is obtained; a similar situation exists for ODP drilling.
A system similar to the Oregon State University MST data logger,
self-contained in a 20ft van, could be set up on the lake shore for timely
logging of the cores. Science programs for Lake Titicaca in 2001 and Lake
Malawi in 2002 have been funded with proposals submitted to drill in Lake
Bosumtwi, Africa and Lake Elgyggytgyn in northeast Siberia.
MST data loggers are becoming standard
equipment; GEOTEK has now sold more than 40. As a consequence, attention
needs to be focused on the quality control of data. Discussion followed
on the need for calibrations, including a means for interlab comparisons.
Suggested reference standards include the water-Aluminium telescope (as
recommended by GEOTEK),
|
|
Go to page 9 (article continued)