Thursday 6 February 2014

Coring, coring, coring (+Videos)

Much of our last field season was spent coring tidal marsh sediments. See previous posts for more details on what we do both in the field and back in the labs. In order to sample sediments several metres below the ground surface we use a sediment corer - either a gouge corer (for reasonably consolidated sediments) or a Russian corer (in peats or more unconsolidated sediments). Here is a short video showing us using a gouge corer at Chaihuin, with the invaluable help of Bill Austin from St Andrews University.





Once we get the sediment out of the ground, we then need to "clean" the core up to see the layers of sediment, in particular if there are any sharp boundaries between two different sediment types, or any sandy layers, which could be tsunami deposits. This is normally a quick process, but we were thwarted by the hundreds of colihauchos (horseflies) at this site!


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