30 September 2019 to 3 October 2019
The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters
Europe/Copenhagen timezone

Vibrocorer for Sampling of Subglacial Sediments in Antarctica

2 Oct 2019, 11:00
20m
The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters

The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters

The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters H.C. Andersens Boulevard 35 DK-1553 Copenhagen V Denmark
Oral Session 5

Speaker

Dr Da Gong (Jilin University, Polar Research Center)

Description

Core sampling from beneath Antarctic subglacial environments offers unique opportunities for examining processes acting of overlying ice. Basal aquatic sediment materials contain important paleo-climatic and paleo-environmental records even more than ice cores, provide unique habitat for life, give significant interactive information between ice bottom, subglacial hydraulic system and the sediments. Sediment coring tools need to pass through the hot-water access borehole and water column before the coring processes, therefore, the corer radial size and its coring ability become the two key points. Several projects have already obtained good cores from Antarctic subglacial environments, but the core lengths were quite short, generally in a 0.1-2 m range. Vibrocoring is a simple and efficient technique for obtaining high–quality long sediment core samples in a variety of configurations and sizes, however, vibrocorers used in deep ocean waters unable to be deployed to subglacial environments due to their oversized vibro-heads that cannot pass through the access borehole. We proposed a vibrocorer built especially for subglacial sediment sampling settings. Techniques, materials and core operation methods are designed on the base of the clean access requirements. An innovative cylindrical vertical vibration system was developed and tested in experimental well with simulated subglacial sediments. The vibrocorer is planned to be used in Antarctica in 2019-2020 season.

Primary author

Dr Da Gong (Jilin University, Polar Research Center)

Co-authors

Prof. Pavel Talalay (Jilin University, Polar Research Center) Dr Xiaopeng Fan (Jilin University, Polar Research Center) Mr Yazhou Li (Jilin University, Polar Research Center) Dr Bing Li (Jilin University, Polar Research Center) Prof. Olaf Eisen (Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung) Dr Emma Smith (Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung) Dr Raphael Gromig (Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung) Dr Wolf Dummann (Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung) Dr Nan Zhang (Jilin University, Polar Research Center) Dr Yang Yang (Jilin University, Polar Research Center) Mr Yunchen Liu (Jilin University, Polar Research Center) Dr Jialin Hong (Jilin University, Polar Research Center ) Mr Xingchen Li (Jilin University, Polar Research Center) Mr Han Zhang (Jilin University, Polar Research Center) Mr Bowen Liu (Jilin University, Polar Research Center) Mr Gang Liu (Jilin University, Polar Research Center) Mr An Liu (Jilin University, Polar Research Center) Mr Xiao Li (Jilin University, Polar Research Center) Mr Gaoli Zhao (Jilin University, Polar Research Center)

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