Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 08/10/2008 - 21:16
Forums
High Arctic Change 08

Hello Ms. Holzer,

I have been following the expedition and reading your journals. They are very interesting. Thank you for taking many amazing photos, the area is beautiful. Best of luck in the last days left for field work. How are sediment cores preserved? How will they be transported to the labs?

Thank you,

Marina Arbit

marbit [at] ucla.edu

Tue, 08/12/2008 - 08:14

Missy Holzer

Hi Marina,
Thank you for following along on our expedition! I would have responded earlier, but I was unsure about how we were going to preserve and ship the sediment cores too. This will be a 2 part response since we still need to get them back to the USA.
We dewatered the cores which means to take out as much of the surface water as possible. The cores were then allowed to air dry over a few days to remove even more water. This morning we placed wads of papertowels in the upper unfilled portion of the core tube and taped a cap to the top. We taped a number of them together and held them tightly on the boat ride back to Longyearbyen.
At the moment all the cores are here at UNIS, and when I find out what we will do next to get them home safely, I'll post another response!
 
Thank you for the question!
Missy & the Svalbard REU Team
 
 
Missy Holzer

Fri, 08/15/2008 - 05:22

Missy Holzer

Hi Marina,
The cores made it back to UNIS without any problems. We took the caps off them to let them dry some more while we were here. The next step was to put a small piece of plastic on top of the sediment in the core so that the top is preserved in transport. If there was an excess amount of tubing on top, then it was cut down. The remaining space is packed with paper toweling, foam, etc.. The cap is put back on the core and is sealed with duct tape. This should keep them safe for the trip home.
Most of us will be packing our cores in the equipment containers, whereas the rest will be shipping them back to the United States.
 
Thanks again for your question!
 
Missy Holzer