THE LAMONT-DOHERTY CORE REPOSITORY

(http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/core-repository)

The Lamont-Doherty Core Repository (LDCR) contains one of the world’s most unique and important collections of scientific samples from the deep sea. The collection contains 20,000 sediment and coral cores from every major ocean and sea. In addition to physical samples, a database of the Lamont core collection has been maintained for nearly 50 years and contains information on the geographic location of each collection site, core length, mineralogy and paleontology, lithology, and structure, and more recently, the full text of megascopic descriptions.

The Lamont-Doherty Core Repository serves the national and international ocean research and teaching communities and receives funding from both the National Science Foundation and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Our primary function is to provide for long-term storage and curation of geological materials. In addition, samples from cores and dredges, descriptions of cores and dredges, digital images and other cruise information from the collection at L-DEO are provided to scientific investigators upon receipt of requests. Materials for educational purposes and museum displays may also be made available in limited quantities where requests are adequately justified. Finally, we also provide analytical services that we charge at cost. 

Over this report period: 66 samples from around Long Island, NY in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, to help our understanding of coastal sediment transport during major storm events - these storms of increasing severity will have increasing economic impacts on coastal communities; 3 cores from Lake Enriquillo in the Dominican Republic to trace the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault in an attempt to better understand the tectonics of the area; and 49 cores from Long Island Sound to help with the ongoing, detailed mapping project of that basin (http://longislandsoundstudy.net/research-monitoring/seafloor-mapping/).

In addition to the above, received material, the Lamont-Doherty Core Repository has sent over 15,000 samples from the cores in our collection to 142 researchers in the United States and worldwide. These samples are used to study various aspects of different areas of the Earth to increase our understanding of such processes as climate change, ocean acidification, evolution, and tectonics.

The lab is well suited for class seminars on sediment from acquisition to processing. There is a vast collection of prepared slides as well and workers skilled in sedimentology for instruction and assistance. A widening circle of social sciences have begun to appreciate the value of Earth Science sampling, and visit to better understand how natural processes such as glaciers, islands and mud record and preserve data from ancient climates and landscapes. Over the term of our last funding cycle, we welcomed 977 visitors to the repository. These range from high school to college students, Boy Scout troops, and the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.

Students, high school and undergraduate, are traditionally hired over the years as part-timers to carry out the varied and unending chores that arise in a large facility. The students are exposed to a broad range of oceanography and marine geology investigators, research, and deep-sea material. This is often the first real science to which a student has ever been exposed.

The Repository Web Site is continually updated with news, projects and research involving samples from our collections. We have also created an educational hyper-wall that serves both as a visualization instrument to visiting groups and an aid to visiting researchers/samplers. We have also started to take advantage of...

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