Progressive Curation of IODP Core Material at Kochi Core Center, Japan

Abstract:

Kochi Core Center (KCC) is one of the 3 IODP core repositories in the world, and 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 IODP core material in the KCC began in 2007 as it started receiving 83 km of Legacy cores from the other IODP core repositories. Since then the KCC has not only maintained curatorial standards of the IODP, but also added many services for convenience of the IODP researchers that include curation of cuttings and deep frozen aliquots of cores, open access to logging equipment in the KCC 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 to show status of samples available for prospective users. With its existing stock of 104 km of the IODP & Legacy cores and cores to be recovered from the Indian Ocean in near future by the JOIDES Resolution, and a huge new reefer building with storage capacity of ca. 150 km core becoming part of the KCC this August, the KCC is bound to play a significant role in promoting earth and biogeo-sciences throughout the world, especially in neighboring Asian countries.