LacCore Home
Facilities Overview
Hundreds of researchers from institutions around the world use our facilities annually.
Cold Storage
High-capacity storage for cores, grab samples, subsamples, and other materials in refrigerated (4°C), frozen (-20°C), and dry/ambient (20°C) environments. A climate-controlled (set point programmable from -40°C to +40°C) shipping container is also available for field storage of up to 2,500m of core and transport to LacCore.
Core Laboratory
- Laboratory Overview
- Equipment for high-resolution digital photography
- Whole- and split-core logging for magnetic susceptibility (both loop and high-resolution point sensors)
- Gamma density, acoustic velocity, non-contact electrical resistivity, natural gamma radiation, and color spectrophotometry
- Machines and tools for splitting all types of cores
- Tools for polishing and sectioning freeze cores
- Petrographic and dissecting scopes with digital image capture
- Loss-on-ignition
- Carbon and sulfur coulometry
- Particle size analysis
- Petrography
- Pollen sample preparation and counting
- Diatom sample prep and counting
- Quantitative biogenic silica analysis
- Freeze drying
- Three fume hoods
- Centrifuges
- Sample preparation stations for several additional procedures.
Field Equipment
- For surface coring: Griffith push corer; gravity corers; freeze corer; Hongve corer; Ekman dredge
- For long cores: Kullenberg corer; Livingstone-Wright piston corers with standard and sawtooth barrels; Livingstone corers with single-use liner modification; vibracoring attachment for Livingstone corer; ~100m of drive rods for Livingstone corers; Mackereth corer; Nesje-type piston-percussion corers, large-diameter Livingstone peat corers
- Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) system for subbottom profiling of lake sediments or dry land
- Field vehicle (4WD), two 19-foot Carolina Skiff boats (for Kullenberg platform with tower and moonpool), pontoon boat with moonpool, two 18-foot row/motorboats, inflatable cataraft with moonpool, two canoes, two inflatable kayaks, one standard kayak, ultralight minimalist inflatable platform
- 20-foot, climate-controlled intermodal shipping container with electrical generator, for field storage and transport of sediment cores; 20-foot and 40-foot standard (“dry”) intermodal shipping containers
Affiliated Resources
LacCore maintains strong connections with centers and institutions on the University campus and neighboring locations.
- Large Lakes Observatory: The facilities at LLO include, among many other things, an organic geochemistry laboratory, and ITRAX XRF core scanner, and site survey seismic equipment.
- St. Croix Watershed Research Station: The Station has several diatom microscopes and maintains an alpha emissions counter for lead-210 and cesium-137 analyses.
- Institute for Rock Magnetism: The IRM runs cryogenic magnetometers for specialized measurements of sediment magnetic properties.
- Aqueous Geochemistry Lab: The lab maintains a VG Elemental PQ-Excel ICP-MS with laser ablation system, an ion chromatography instrument, and other analystical machines.
- Stable Isotope Lab: A Finnigan MAT 252 multi-collector mass spectrometer equipped with Kiel II, and various vacuum extraction lines (all "off-line") for carbonates, water, and DIC-carbon.
