UK Polar Sediment Core Facility

Search cores stored in the UK Polar Sediment Core Facility (located at the British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge) and collected on polar cruises and expeditions.

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The Polar Sediment Core Facility. Grey racks hold cyclindrical tubes containing sediment cores.
© 2023 British Antarctic Survey

Sediment cores are tubes of sediment collected from the bottom of oceans or lakes. By studying the layers in these cores, which may extend tens of thousands of years into the past, scientists are able to investigate the climate and environment at the time that the sediment was deposited. The Polar Sediment Core Facility holds cores collected across Antarctica, the polar oceans, and sub-Antarctic islands.

Please use this portal to explore our core collection, which contains information on cores collected on cruises and expeditions to the polar regions, many of which are stored at the Polar Core Storage Facility at the British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge. Explore the sediment core collection using the Interactive Map. The collection is divided into marine cores and 'terrestrial' (lake/peat) cores which can also be explored on their own pages.

Contact: Mark Evans for information on using core material held in the PSCF.

Map View

View all cores on an interactive map

Marine and lake/peat sediments

Welcome to the Polar Sediment Core Facility sediment core database interface! Please select the type of sediments you want to explore:

Dictionaries and Wiki

To view shared components such as instruments and controlled vocabularies, explore Dictionaries. To have more information about how to use the sediment database, have a look at the Wiki.