Acquisition of Core Logging Equipment for the Antarctic Marine Geology Research Facility

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*** 9871166 This award, provided by the Office of Polar Programs and the Office of Science and Technology Infrastructure at NSF, supports acquisition of equipment for the Antarctic Marine Geology Research Facility (AMGRF) at Florida State University (FSU). AMGRF is supported by NSF as the marine sediment core repository for the US Antarctic Program (USAP) and is the largest repository of Southern Ocean piston cores in the world. AMGRF has been conducting marine geological research and receiving, describing, and archiving cores for over 30 years. AMGRF holdings include more than 20,000 m of cored sediment (over 6500 cores). The Facility also archives more than 2000 m of rotary-cored material from programs such as the Dry Valley Drilling Project, Cenozoic Investigations of the Ross Sea, and the current Cape Roberts Project. This unique collection of sediments is especially valuable today because of the Cenozoic paleoenvironmental record it preserves for the largely inaccessible Antarctic continent. During the past decade scientific attention has focused increasingly on the role of Antarctica in the evolution of global Cenozoic climate, and especially as it pertains to research about global warming. AMGRF provides three primary functions for the Antarctic and Earth Science community: (1) Service - Core descriptions, sampling, and technical support to Principal Investigators. (2) Research - Equipment and space for in-house and visiting investigators. (3) Education - Workshops and short courses for investigators, training for graduate and undergraduate students, and lectures and tours for students of all ages as well as the general public. A primary product of AMGRF activities are detailed core descriptions of deep-sea cores recovered by the USAP. These descriptions, published as AMGRF reports, are used by investigators around the world to evaluate the utility of specific cores for their research programs. In addition, AMGRF provides necessary research equipment and technical support for in-house and external USAP Principal Investigators and their research teams who come to the Facility to study and sample in detail the cores they have acquired on USAP vessels. Acquisition of a multi-sensor core logging system and a modern research-grade light microscope with imaging capabilities will allow AMGRF to significantly improve basic work on core descriptions and to keep pace with modern methods in core analysis and curation. This equipment will give Antarctic and Earth Science researchers who use the Facility the necessary tools to rapidly and objectively analyze the new piston and shallow drill cores that are sent to the AMGRF each year. It will provide several non-destructive modes of analysis that will eliminate excessive sampling for purposes of core characterization. In addition, researchers will be able to re-analyze many of the thousands of cores already stored at the Facility at a resolution not previously possible. This equipment will serve the needs of both FSU investigators and those of the wider community in the US and other countries for many years to come. The equipment will also benefit students from FSU and from other institutions who need exposure to, and training in state-of-the art equipment for conducting modern research in marine geology. It will provide a technical infrastructure that is complementary to and worthy of the unique collection of cores archived at the Facility. The equipment will greatly enhance the value of the collections and provide a higher scientific return on the 30-year investment that has gone into the acquisition and maintenance of the sediment cores. ***