Following the well-received tweet this week promoting the available marine sediment cores, the BOSCORF team thought a summary of how to access the collection would be appreciated.
BOSCORF curates the UK’s deep-sea sediment core collection, any sediment core collected as part of a UKRI funded research, or cores collected aboard a UKRI research vessel, are housed in our specialist facility in Southampton. The facility and collection are available to all researchers, from first year PhD upwards, in the UK and worldwide. Researchers are welcome to visit the facility to visually log sediment cores, subsample or analyse our collection. We currently house 2430 cores, totalling 10,000 metres of sediment from across the globe.
Collecting sediment cores is expensive, and coring cruises often collect more core material than is required for the funded project. Promoting the reuse of these valuable scientific assets is part of BOSCORF's main objective, and we encourage all researchers to get in touch.
Sample and data search:
Use our interactive map to locate sediment cores then get in touch with us by email. In addition to storing the cores, we also hold non-destructive core logging data gathered from our instruments; these data are also freely available.
If you want to acquire a new data set from one of our sediment cores, or to scan you own sediment cores, BOSCORF is available to assist with your research needs. If you are planning to collect sediment cores, and are interested in analysing them at BOSCORF, please get in touch for a quote to use for grant applications.
If you require sub-samples from the collection, we can subsample for you, and ship samples worldwide. Alternatively, we are always happy to have you visit the lab to visually log the sediment cores and subsample.
To request analysis, sub-samples, or data, please use the forms on our website here. Please note that we encourage researchers to contact us informally first by email to check sample condition and availability and/or to determine suitability of a sample for scanning.
If you have any questions, or would like an informal chat about a project you are planning, please get in touch with the team at boscorf@noc.ac.uk.
