Preservation of Lake Sediment Cores and Associated Data: Benefits of Proper Curation

This grant supports a workshop focused on discussion of the desirability/attributes of a centralized lake core analysis and storage facility(ies) that would provide the maximum benefit to the U.S. paleoclimate community as well as the greater geoscience community. The workshop will be held in Salt Lake City on the campus of the University of Utah in March 2006 and will be advertised widely in advance. That significant progress in paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic investigations may be gained by establishing: (1) long-term curation of and community access to lacustrine sediment cores, (2) easy access to information about existing cores, and (3) uniform protocols for core description and sample cataloging, will be topics/questions of discussion. The report of this workshop will assist Program in identifying the need for and, if so, the optimum characteristics of such a facility and may provide a context for a future call for competing proposals.