Mar 4, 2020
In the fourth episode of Core Ideas, we examine the retrieval of the mud critical to paleolimnology (i.e. sediment cores) from the lake bottom with minimal disturbance. Usually, sediment cores are collected from a platform at the lake surface, such as a canoe, boat, the floats of a helicopter/plane, or even the ice of a frozen lake, and as discussed last time, sediment cores of similar length vary massively in the amount of time they can represent. Therefore, selection of an appropriate sediment corer will depend on the study lake (size, depth, location), study goals (time period of interest, amount of sediment required) and the fieldwork conditions (remoteness, time of year). In our mudslinging discussion we spend most of our time talking about three different types of sediment corers: freeze corers, gravity corers and piston corers (although some others are mentioned).