This collaborative grant between the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities and Duluth (EAR-0949285) campuses supports renewed support of operations and laboratory improvements at LacCore, a national multi-user lacustrine core archival and analysis facility. LacCore was previously supported under EAR-0652769. The LacCore Facility supports the limnological community for studies that contribute to our understanding of past climates, ecological systems, and biogeochemical dynamics on the continents though detailed sedimentological analysis and archival services for lacustrine cores. LacCore operates open laboratories to allow community access to specialized field and laboratory equipment and staff expertise for Initial Core Description (ICD) methods including: core splitting; non-destructive multi-sensor core logging; palynological preparation; grain size analysis; carbon coulometry; phase identification via x-ray diffraction; biogenic silica analysis; preparation of samples for subsequent stable isotopic analysis; digital core photography, and optical petrography/smear slide analysis. LacCore also provides refrigerated and frozen core storage and archival services and field coring equipment and curatorial materials (D-tubes) support for lake coring expeditions. LacCore staff are also responsible for curation of lake core ICD metadata and the routine transmission of all data to NOAA?s National Geophysical Data Center. The Large Lake Observatory at Duluth will now be a node of LacCore and will provide x-ray fluorescence (XRF) core scanning services to the broader paleorecords research community for rapid down core elemental analysis. LacCore will institute a user fee schedule beginning in 2011. The Facility will continue as a training ground for hundreds of researchers, particularly graduate students, in coring and core analysis techniques. LacCore staff are engaged in education and outreach including an ongoing collaborative project aimed at study of the paleoenvironments of wild rice lakes in northern Minnesota with tribal college students and teachers from the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College.
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