[MIS22-P01] Celebrating First Decade of IODP Core Curation Services at Kochi Core Center, Japan
Keywords:Marine core, Drilling Science, DSDP, ODP, IODP, KCC
Under the auspices of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), Kochi Core Center (KCC) was designated as one of the 3 IODP core repositories in the world. The KCC is in-charge of curating core materials collected/to be collected from most of the Indian Ocean, west Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea. Curation of the IODP core material in the KCC began in 2007 as it started receiving core material from other two IODP core repositories. This core material was collected under the DSDP (Deep Sea Drilling Program) and ODP (Ocean Drilling Program) that preceded the IODP. With the development of various new analytical techniques and geochemical tracers, and ever-going refinement of environmental record based on traditional indices, the core material collected under the DSDP and ODP (also known as ‘Legacy core’) continuously attract science community. The KCC has not only maintained high curatorial standards of the IODP for providing core samples free of cost, but also added many unique services like curation of cuttings and deep frozen aliquots of cores, open access to logging equipment for core measurements, virtual core library to provide quick online access to 3-D XCT images of the cores collected by the D/V Chikyu, online summary of the cores being curated in the KCC, and up-to-date online images of working half of recently sampled cores to show status of samples available for research. A huge new reefer building was added to the KCC in August 2014 that raised the capacity of the KCC to store 250 km of core. With its current stock of 121 km of the IODP cores, that has built up over last decade, and the cores to be collected under new IODP (International Ocean Discovery Program), the KCC continues to play a significant role in promoting earth and biogeosciences throughout the world.