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Mapping Techniques: Sediment Sampling

Sediment Cores

Example of Boxcorer

Boxcorer filled with sediment (core top is to the left, scale in centimeters).
Courtesy: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

For typical sediment cores, a hollow tube is driven into the sediment and taken up to obtain a continuous, undisturbed cross-section of the seafloor. This core can then be split and subsampled for the analysis of chemical, biological, and physical properties.

View vibra-core diagram. View Image

Advantages and Limitations

Sediment cores can provide a great deal of information about the composition of the sediment column and the study area. A history of the area can be determined through analysis of sedimentation rates, magnetic properties, total organic carbon, grain size sampling, trace metal concentrations, and organic pollutants. Unfortunately, sediment coring is a time-consuming and gear-intensive technique, so cores can be expensive to collect and process.

Uses

Sediment cores can provide long-term history of an area and are useful for supplementing acoustic surveys. The Hudson River Estuary Program uses sediment cores in conjunction with side-scan sonar, sub-bottom profilers, multibeam bathymetry, and grab sampling to map benthic habitats of the Hudson River Estuary. This study includes investigation of temporal change and invertebrate habitats.

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