December 13, 2013
Nick and Will with Carman (director of the Pindo Mirador biological station)
Three members of the PCRG (William Gosling, Encarni Montoya and Nick Loughlin) visited Ecuador (November-December 2013) to develop collaborations with Ecuadorian institutions, recover more lake sediments, and find new potential sites for projects. Below are some photos from:
Full reports on specific aspects of the fieldwork to follow.
July 17, 2013
Trecking with sediment corer in the high Andes of Peru
When it comes to collecting sediments from lakes its all about having the right tools for the job. Working in remote areas of the tropics we tend to favour the Colinvaux-Vohnout corer; supplied by Vince Vohnout at Geo-core). The advantages of this system are:
Eric Martinez carrying an Avon Redstart back out from Laguna Khomer Kotcha (Williams et al., 2011a)
With the right platform (two banana boats and an A-frame) we have manged to retrive c. 20 m of sediment from 20 m of water (c. 40 m of drill rod extended); Lake Pacucha, Peru (Hillyer et al., 2009). More typically we use two Avon Redstart inflatables and a platform following the design of Colinvaux et al. (1999).
Recent debate on the International Paleolimnology Association list server saw recommendations for a number of other systems.
Including: UWITECH gravity corer, Pylonex gravity corer, Aquatic Research Instrument products, and modified systems by Jason Curtis at University of Florida.
I would be interested if anyone has any thoughts on the relative merits of these systems (or others) and there capabilities.
Photos and references below:
Ecology of the past 