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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

AAPG Bulletin

Abstract


Volume: 53 (1969)

Issue: 3. (March)

First Page: 723

Last Page: 723

Title: Bottom Sampling of Georgia Estuaries with NEL Spade Corer: ABSTRACT

Author(s): James D. Howard

Article Type: Meeting abstract

Abstract:

This is a progress report of a recently begun study to investigate in detail the bottom sediments of the Georgia estuaries and continental shelf. The potential significance of this project is enhanced greatly by the use of the NEL spade corer as the principal sampling device. This corer is capable of taking large, oriented, and undisturbed samples from unconsolidated substrates.

Hans-Eric Reineck, director of the Senckenberg Institute, invented the original box-corer. This was modified subsequently by Bouma and Marshall, and more recently it has been changed further by personnel of the Naval Electronics Laboratory of San Diego. The corer has a surface area of 10 by 12 in. and can penetrate to a depth of 24 in. A self-locking compass designed by Rosfelder and Marshall of Scripps Oceanographic Institution records the orientation of the core at the instant of sampling.

Physical and biogenic sedimentary structures which are of principal interest to this study are being examined by stereo X-ray radiography and preserved as epoxy peels. Wave- and current-formed structures preserved in the sediments are being mapped and compared with patterns of current flow; biogenic structures represented by burrows and bioturbate textures are being examined and recorded for their environmental significance; and sediment grain size and composition are being determined.

In addition to obtaining fundamental information on the conditions of sedimentation of the Georgia shelf and estuaries today, this study is producing information which permits direct comparisons with clastic facies of the Pleistocene strata of Georgia.

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Copyright 1997 American Association of Petroleum Geologists