Funds are provided to continue the operation of the LDGO Sample Repository and allow better community access to both sea floor materials and related information. Curation and maintenance of the existing and growing collection and expansion of the range of sedimentary archives by inclusion of coral samples are the main objectives. Further enhancement will include the generation of basic data by discrete sediment measurements as well as nondestructive scanning methods. Improvement of the digital data management and access with the Digital Sample Curation System and an expanded data mining ability is also a goal. The repository cores form important research materials for deep-sea exploration, geological hazards, marine geology, tectonics, sedimentology, geochemistry, evolution, and paleoclimate. Data from old and new materials in the collection were and will be the source for novel interpretations resulting in hundreds of high-profile and influential articles published during the past decade, in leading journals.
Broader Impacts: The Repository continues to be involved in many educational activities. It participates in Saturday Workshops for Educators where teachers can accrue up to 15 hours of new teacher staff development credits. The Repository hosts many visiting graduate and undergraduate classes and the lab is well suited for class seminars on sediments from acquisition to processing. The plan includes employing undergraduates and high school students in research-oriented positions. The repository and its staff will also continue to be available to educators and the media for opportunities to disseminate science to the general public
THE LAMONT-DOHERTY CORE REPOSITORY (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 social media with a Twitter account (@corerepository) that highlights significant research and activities, both current and historical, related to our collection. The Repository staff continues to assist with events coordinated by The Hudson River Estuary Program of New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Hudson Basin River Watch. Each fall, environmental education centers team up with school classes along the Hudson River to gather data and river exploration. All data collected is available on-line: www.ldeo.columbia.edu/edu/k12/snapshotday/#data. Two videos, "Coring the North Atlantic" and "Working on Cores" made by the Repository Curator and staff, have been distributed through the Core Repository, and Columbia University's Barnard and Teachers College. Hundreds of copies of each have been burned on CD and distributed to educational institutions. The curator is on the Lamont-Doherty Open House Committee, staffed by the offices of Development and External Relations. The Open House committee is a widely representative group that is responsible for developing ideas for, and implementing, Lamont-Doherty's annual Open House. The Open House provides the Core Repository a venue for outreach to approximately 5,000 visitors interested in marine science. Cores, sediment, microfossils, minerals and dredges are exhibited while staff and students answer visitor's questions. On several occasions, small samples of expendable flow-in or other disturbed sediments containing microfossils and/or minerals have been given to visitors with instructions on how the sediments can be processed and studied. This has been an enormously popular endeavor, especially with young students.
