Core Processing Lab (CPL)

The core processing lab is a unique facility offering to visitors the possibility for logging, scanning and photographing of sediment cores. Further information about the instruments and their use as well as costs can be found by clicking on the links below:

– Multi Sensor Core Logger
– Itrax XRF Core Scanner
– User information and costs Itrax scanning
– Order form Itrax scanning

The SU Sediment Core Processing Lab
– A Brief Background

When Ivar Hessland (1914–2006) took on the professorship in General and Historical Geology at Stockholms Högskola in 1953, he changed the research focus from Quaternary geology to marine geoscience. Hessland began to engage students systematically in the study of marine geochemistry, marine geophysics, marine sedimentology and marine micropaleontology, being inspired partly from his previous experience as visiting professor in Louisiana (Baton Rouge).

He retired in 1980, having produced 28 Ph Ds in these fields. When the department subsequently moved from Kungstensgatan 45, where it had been located since 1912, to the campus in Frescati in 1997, Rolf Hallberg had ensured that the geochemistry labs were well equipped and operational in order to fulfill the needs of his group. And Tom Flodén had kept the marine geophysics group equipped with their basic tools of the trade. Both were Hessland students. The move to Frescati provided an opportunity to acquire new equipment and instruments. Hallberg acquired an ESEM and Flodén invested into new marine geophysical processing tools. Jan Backman, another Hessland student, was offered the Chair in General and Historical Geology after Maurits Lindström in July 1997, when the department moved to Frescati. Backman's previous experience of sediment processing included a few years working in Nick Shackleton's (1937–2006) lab in Cambridge and nearly a year at sea on one DSDP (D/V Glomar Challenger) and several ODP (D/V JOIDES Resolution) Legs. During 1996-1997, Backman received equipment grants from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation and the Swedish Natural Science Research Council on the order of about 13 MSEK. These funds were invested into stable isotope mass spectrometers, element concentration ICPs, a chirp sonar system, a new piston corer – designed by his student Martin Jakobsson, with some advice from Jim Broda at WHOI – a Multi-Sensor Core Logger (MSCL), plus a plethora of the tools and instruments needed in any well equipped sediment processing lab. Barbara Wohlfarth joined the marine geoscience group in 2007. Concomitantly, she got a Swedish Research Council grant to purchase an Itrax XRF scanner and to upgrade the MSCL with a line-scan digital camera. Also in 2007, Martin Jakobsson received over 30 MSEK in grants from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Swedish Research Council and the Swedish Maritime Administration, in order to purchase and install a hull-mounted multibeam sonar system, including chirp and backscatter for seafloor sediment characterization, on the arctic-class icebreaker Oden. The department is thus well equipped in terms of sediment processing, permitting us to adopt many of the successful multiproxy approaches needed (destructive and non-destructive analyses), in order to pursue fruitful research on marine and lacustrine sediments.