A tripod piston corer for taking a meter-long sediment core with an undisturbed sediment–water interface

We present a design for a piston corer that can take a sediment core up to 1 m long, with an undisturbed sediment–water interface. The coring device possesses a tripod unit and a core-tube unit, the latter comprised of a core tube, a piston with a wire, a drive weight in which the core tube is mounted and a steel rod. The tripod stands on the sediment surface during coring, stabilizing the system and serving as an anchor point for the piston wire. A ball clamp, the critical component of the design, is mounted on top of the tripod. The steel rod runs through the ball clamp and at its lower end, holds the drive weight and the core tube. The ball clamp allows the core tube to slide downward, while the piston is held in a fixed vertical position by the wire connected to the tripod. When the corer is lifted, however, the ball clamp locks. This makes it possible to operate the corer with a single cable, because the piston is not subject to any lifting force when the corer is retrieved. The piston remains in position in the core tube even if the collected sediment core is very short. The piston corer can be deployed from a raft or a boat.     

Big Ben: a new wide-bore piston corer for multi-proxy palaeolimnology

We present a design for a large diameter piston corer, deployed from a raft that is suitable for use in shallow lakes. The piston corer, known as Big Ben, consists of a core tube, a piston on a rope and a corer head, to which rods are attached to drive the tube into the sediment. A core catcher, which aids the support of the core tube when full of sediment, has been incorporated into the design. To extrude the sediment, a framework has been designed to keep the core tube upright and stationary and a modified bottle jack is used to push the piston upwards during the extrusion process. The practical operation of the Big Ben coring system from setting up a coring platform to collecting and safely extruding a core is detailed. Finally we summarise recent experiences of deploying the corer and highlight its potential uses in the developing field of multi-proxy palaeolimnology.     

The HTH sediment corer

Gravity corers have been in use for a long time and in many different configurations. There are, however, reasons for improvements since new manufacturing materials have become available, and demands for accurate coring and sub-sampling in both research and environmental monitoring have increased. The HTH-coring equipment, which has been tested for >10 years by several users, is a further development of the Kajak-corer concept and has some unique features which are described here. To avoid contamination in pollution studies, the equipment is made of stainless steel and plastic (polyoxymethylene and polyethylene), and the use of these materials also makes the equipment more durable. The extruding device is the main improvement over previous versions. It consists of a piston that seals perfectly to the core tube wall, a threaded rod that can be mounted on a foot plate, and an extruder head with a stationary upper-half and a rotatable lower-half that is screwed along the rod. One 360°-turn gives a 5-mm thick sediment increment that is scraped off using the sectioning tray. Sub-sampling is quick and accurate and can be performed by one person. The equipment is constructed to allow coring and sub-sampling both in summer and winter.     

Coring and extruding sediments from shall lakes with the simple, inexpensive VolksCorer and VolksExtruder

Materials for constructing a simple piston corer are available at most well-stocked hardware stores, primarily using galvanized fence post for the barrel, and pipe for the drive rod and head. These are assembled with a modicum of machinist skills. In the field, this VolksCorer operates like similar corers; it is limited to relatively shallow water (about 10–15 m) and is poorly suited for down-the-hole coring, but it requires few specialized tools. Likewise, materials to construct the VolksExtruder are widely available; this extruder, although simple, allows very precise extrusion control. The very low cost of the corer and extruder (less than US$50 each) make them suitable for investigators operating with low budgets without sacrificing sample quality.     

Vibracore splitting jig

A lightweight, inexpensive jig for splitting 7.6 cm diameter vibracores is described. The advantage of the jig is its simplicity, low cost and portability to the coring site whether on land, ice or a boat. Core splitting at the coring site can guide additional coring activity, similar to other coring devices that extrude sediment as part of the coring process. The simple jig ensures straight and even cuts through the aluminum tube wall, leading to precise core splitting in the field or lab.     

Coring tips

This commentary is intended as a practical guide for the non-motorized use of piston corers to obtain undisturbed sections of lake sediments. Good recovery is essential for accurate reconstruction of environmental and limnological history. Emphasis is placed on the square-rod piston corer, which is widely used for acquisition of sediment cores in meter-long sections from lakes as much as 30 m deep. Coring platforms for open water can be easily prepared on pairs of boats or canoes or (in water depth up to 15 m) even a single small rubber raft, but firm anchoring is essenial to maintain the vertical position of the casing and to assure re-entry into a single hole. Incomplete recovery on individual drives is not a result of sediment compaction but rather the build-up of friction on the tube interior, by which the core forms a plug that prevents further recovery.Short cores of soft sediment for the study of recent changes in lakes are also best acquired with a piston corer, for a gravity corer without a piston may be subject to the same type of plug formation. In cases in which the structure of the sediment must be preserved (e.g. annual laminations), freezing the sediment in place with a dry-ice solution is the best procedure.     

Notis og litteratur Note and reviews

Nesje, A., Søgnen, K., Elgersma, A. &; Dahl, S. O. 1987. A piston corer for lake sediments. Norsk geogr. Tidsskr. Vol. 41, 123-125. Oslo. ISSN 0029-1952.

A modified piston sampler for lake sediments is described. The sampler employs the piston of the Livingstone device in conjunction with the use of a falling weight to penetrate the sampling tube into compact sediments without the use of casing. The sampler can core up to 6 metres of minerogenic and organic sediments and can easily be handled by 2–3 persons both from ice and rafts in lakes with water depths to at least 20–30 m.     

Parachute-assisted gravity sediment corer (Algonquin Corer)

Details are outlined for the construction and use of an easily constructed and inexpensive parachute-assisted, gravity-driven, sediment coring device. This corer has been named the Algonquin corer since it was designed, tested and constructed at École Secondaire Algonquin, North Bay, Ontario. This corer utilizes an underwater parachute to effectively control and stabilize its descent, and a driving mechanism (hammer) to increase the penetration of the corer. Other innovative features are its corrective mercury and magnetic switches, which allow the user to precisely monitor both the position of the driving mechanism and the corer's angle of sediment penetration. These optional features may be constructed for use with this particular corer or constructed separately to enhance existing coring devices. Details of these features are provided and their functions outlined. The versatile features, cost-effectiveness and ease of construction of the Algonquin corer make it an effective and practical tool for conducting sediment analysis studies at all levels. It is also well suited for the instruction of coring techniques and paleolimnological methods at both the university and high school level.     

Year-round cooling and thermal stabilization of water-saturated soils under engineering structures

We consider the problem of year-round cooling of water-saturated soil to freezing temperatures in order to convert it into a state of permafrost.A new soil-cooling apparatus is proposed.The apparatus is to be made in modular form and connected to passive-active thermal piles (thermosyphons).The estimated capacity of one apparatus allows simultaneous use of up to 1,000 thermal piles for ground freezing.The apparatus is based on natural sources of energy:solar radiation and wind;and it can be used for soil freezing.This approach can prevent thawing of soft soils under railways and roads,as well as under buildings or structures,in an area of more than tens of hectares.The apparatus has no mechanical moving parts and can operate for a long time in stand-alone mode without staff involvement.     

Freeze coring of soft surface sediments at a water depth of several hundred meters

A freeze corer was developed specifically for the sampling of unconsolidated surface sediments by in-situ freezing. The new device which is presented here is designed to be used to a water depth of up to 1000 meters and was successfully tested at a depth of 200 m. The corer consists of a high pressure resistant housing with a vacuum insulated jacket for the ethanol which can be chilled by separate cooling agents, adjustable stabilizing legs, an electrical pump and a freezing wedge of 100 cm length. The freeze coring can be performed from a platform or a boat by using only a single cable to pull it up or to lower it. All other equipment is inside of the resistant housing. The core sample can easily be cut into two distinct slabs by use of the freeze-protectors on the small sides of the freeze wedge.     

A field extruder for rapidly sectioning near-surface cores from lakes and wetlands

The soft uppermost sediments in lakes and wetlands contain important records of past environmental change. Although the technology for coring these sediments is relatively well established, there has been a continuing effort to improve the design of equipment that can provide the precise volumetric samples required for high-resolution dating and elemental analysis. Soft-sediment cores are usually sectioned near a coring site under a wide range of field conditions creating a challenge for both field crews and equipment. A new field extruder was therefore designed to simplify the process of fine-sectioning these cores in the field while improving volumetric-sampling accuracy. The new extruder is relatively light, stable, and easy to use, but sufficiently strong to extrude long continuous cores of stiff sediment if required. The key features of this extruder minimize sampling errors by enabling an operator to automate the measurement and extrusion of a pre-determined volume of sediment. The extruder was successfully field tested on a variety of sediment types in a large wetland from southern Florida, USA and proved easy to master by even inexperienced field crews.     

The measurement of modern sedimentation in estuarine environments in New Zealand

Concern about coastal sedimentation in New Zealand is widespread. As a result, many regional councils now undertake monitoring programmes to understand the rate of change that is occurring within estuarine environments. A variety of techniques are used to understand estuarine infill from short‐term (fixed rods, marker layers, laser surveying) to long‐term studies (coring). Short‐term studies provide detailed but temporally restricted data sets, while coring studies provide long‐term generalised data. This paper reviews the common methods used within New Zealand and suggests that a combination of both methods is the ideal for understanding sediment infill.     

A simple method to vertically stabilize line-suspended,lightweight percussion coring equipment

An inexpensive improvement to lightweight percussion coring systems is presented. Non-stretching lines are often required to facilitate core sampling in hundreds of metres of water, unfortunately such lines are usually negatively buoyant, which creates difficulties in keeping lightweight core assemblies upright while lowering through the water column. The addition of urethane closed-cell foam to the core head creates buoyancy that vertically stabilizes the coring assembly within the water column and prevents the core barrel from contacting the sediment-water interface non-vertically.     

Simple gravity corer suitable for educators

Instructions for construction and use of a simple and inexpensive sediment coring device are presented. The sampler is suitable for use in high school and undergraduate science courses.     

The relationship of modern plant remains to water depth in alkaline lakes in New England, USAe

Paleohydrologists sometimes use macrofossils of aquatic vascular plants as one of several independent lines of evidence to infer changes in past lake-levels. Typically, this usage relies on an assumption that the seeds of aquatic species are not dispersed far from the source plants. The water depth over the coring site at the time the seeds were deposited is inferred from the water depth at which the species generally grows today. We determined the water depths at which particular plant-remain types are deposited, and tested whether they can be used successfully as proxy evidence for lake level. The results should aid the interpretation of fossil seeds in paleohydrological studies. A total of 189 surface sediment samples from 13 lakes in Maine and Massachusetts were examined for plant remains, and vegetation was surveyed in the immediate vicinity of each sediment sampling-site. The seeds of some taxa were found in sediment from water-depth ranges much broader than those in which living plants occur. However, in combination, even plant-remain types with broad depth ranges can be used effectively to reconstruct water depth. Presence of plant-remain types can be used to infer water depth regardless of abundance. Test samples indicate that inferring water depth from plant remains works well for shallow, alkaline lakes in New England.     

深部盐矿勘探钻井液研究与应用

ZK001井钻遇地层为大段泥岩,部分地层为页岩、含盐泥岩、盐膏层。在泥页岩地层进行大口径全面钻进,钻速较快,固控设备能力有限,引起钻屑中粘土颗粒重复性膨胀、软化及裂解分散,最终可能造成粘土侵,对井内安全造成威胁。深部岩膏层易溶于水,从而导致盐层蠕变、井径扩大、井壁失稳等问题。以ZK001井为例,通过优化钻井液体系及现场施工工艺,解决了地层强造浆、盐层失稳等问题。通过岩石力学测试、阳离子交换容量测试、钻井液体系优选及性能测试,确定了上部地层采用聚合物钻井液体系,下部含盐层取芯钻进转换为饱和盐水钻井液体系。通过选用合适的钻井液密度、粘度、切力量、滤失量、含盐量等指标,可以有效控制上部泥岩井壁稳定、含盐层蠕变、井径扩大的问题。钻进过程中钻井液性能稳定且易于维护,从而保证了钻进工作安全、高效、顺利的进行。     

Modeling the effect of convex upward sediment deformation and horizontal core sectioning on paleolimnological data

We analyzed photos of convex upward deformation in split sediment cores to obtain reasonable parameters with which to model the effect of convex upward deformation on paleolimnological data. Using a 3-dimensional raster model, we modeled the effect of this deformation on a hypothetical dataset. Model results indicated that convex upward sediment deformation integrates samples from an increasingly broader range of stratigraphic layers with an increasing degree of deformation. After applying deformation, extruded concentration profiles were nearly identical, despite varying the extrusion interval between 0.1 and 1 cm, suggesting there is a limit to the resolution that can be attained by horizontal sectioning if deformation occurred during sampling. Our data suggest that it is essential to determine the degree of sediment deformation caused by coring prior to conducting high-resolution analyses on horizontally sectioned samples.     

Differential sedimentation versus coring artifacts: a comparison of two widely used piston-coring methods

In order to compare two widely used piston-coring techniques, parallel cores were taken with both a Kullenberg and a Livingstone corer in the deepest part of Soppensee (25 m), a small eutrophic Swiss lake containing varved sediments. The cores were taken within a horizontal distance of 3 m and yield comparable stratigraphic records. Differences in millimetre-scale microstructure are attributed to primary sedimentation processes at the water/sediment interface. Sediment thin-sections, as well as sediment x-radiograph investigations, reveal no difference in microstructure that could unequivocally be attributed to one of the coring methods used. The differences in deposition are therefore thought to reflect the inherent variability of lacustrine sedimentation in Soppensee.Major differences in overall core recovery do occur, however, in organic-rich, highly porous sediments. These variations are primarily attributed to differential gas expansion. Actual sediment-accumulation rates can therefore only be correctly estimated if the sedimentary record can be constrained within a high-resolution temporal framework, e.g. by annual laminations.     

An inexpensive, optical (infrared) detector to locate the sediment/water interface in lakes with unconsolidated sediments

Unconsolidated, flocculent sediments that are frequently resuspended by wind action are found in many shallow-water lakes. Collecting sediment/water interface cores in such lakes for paleolimnological study may be problematic because it is difficult to determine the depth to the water/sediment interface. Accurately determining this water depth is necessary to guarantee that a piston corer does not penetrate the sediments prior to the drive and to maximize the core length. A simple instrument constructed with inexpensive, readily available components is described. This infrared floc detector (IFD) is used to sense the increased optical density of unconsolidated sediments as the detector is lowered into a lake. The IFD, in effect, yields a precise as well as an accurate measure of water depth. The depth to the water/sediment interface can be measured with an accuracy of approximately 1 cm, provided surface waters are relatively calm.