This year BOSCORF was pleased to be able to offer two runs of the "Advanced techniques in sediment core analysis and data visualisation." This year’s guest lecturers were: Simon Crowhurst (the University of Cambridge), who delivered an outstanding session focused on the use of the Avaatech core scanner in the environmental sciences; Andy Cundy (University of Southampton) who gave a comprehensive overview of XRF theory and Mark Vardy of SAND Geophysics who presented the use of the MSCL-S and physical properties data, and how this can be used to tie together sediment core records and geophysical surveys.
The courses were both highly successful, and BOSCORF staff really enjoyed being able to welcome 24 PhD's and ECR's to the laboratory for this specialist course. The BOSCORF team really appreciated the enthusiasm for the new poster session, which provided a fantastic opportunity for the course participants to discuss their research plans and core logger datasets. It was remarkable to see the diversity of projects utilising XRF data in particular, spanning marine geology, archaeology, pollution studies and traditional hard-rock geology. This reflects the ever increasing range of applications of XRF core scanning. The lab sessions this year were longer and focussed on a case study core and learning how to spot erroneous data, and how to handle large and complex datasets.
BOSCORF were delighted with feedback from the course, which we take very seriously and will use to improve the course content for the next session in 2020. Here are a few selected quotes from participants this year. We have highlighted a few photos, but if you have any more from the course we would love to see them on Twitter @BOSCORF_NOC. If you attended the course, please remember that the BOSCORF team can assist you with data cleaning and processing once you have finished your data collection. Please do get in touch with us if you have further questions or comments.
"The course was great! Brought me from near beginner of the concepts through to a more advanced level.”
“The lab sessions with the sediment cores and examples of Itrax and MSCL datasets were really good to help inderstand how to interpret the data.”
“Very useful course, the description and explanation of analytical techniques will definitely improve my research.”
“It was very useful, I will recommend it to other PhD students.”
“Very useful, even though I have done a reasonable amount of XRF core scanning, this helped me understand the theory behind it and the caveats with the data. Also feel like the BOSCORF Team are very welcoming and I know where to go for help in the future!”
