Appendice 2 - Inventory of drilling equipment / long lacustrine sequences

A-2. INVENTORY OF DRILLING EQUIPMENT FOR RECOVERY OF LONG LACUSTRINE SEQUENCES

Compiled by Dr. S. Leroy
Centre for Palaeoecology, School of Geosciences,
Queen's University of Belfast
Belfast BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

A-2.1 Introduction

As an outgrowth of the Workshop, PAGES sent a questionnaire worldwide in order to inventory existing drilling systems capable of obtaining long lake records as recommended in this workshop report. Six drilling and one coring system are described here. For four of them (NEDRA, Eurodrill, Sedidrill, and Usinger), one or more research scientists or scientific laboratories are part of the management structure. FORAKY, CNEA, and BIP are commercial companies, although the former has already drilled for scientific purposes and the latter two are keen to start. These systems all use multiple-entry coring, and most of them use core barrels with liners. They can drill through tens to hundreds of meters of water and through similar thicknesses of sediment.

Some systems that were used to drill well-known sites are not included here. Lake Biwa was drilled by a unique system described by Horie (1987; 1991): a cylindrical drilling pipe engineering method based on the principle of a bottle floating in water. Recent drilling in a Cenozoic lacustrine basin near Fort Yukon, Alaska, by the U.S. Geological Survey used a truck-mounted, self-contained Portadrill 524 rotary core rig (Ager, 1996). We have not systematically surveyed the vast array of commercial drilling equipment.

Several institutions maintain World-Wide Web pages with information about their coring systems and operations. These include:

Department of Tropical Environment Studies and Geography,
James Cook University (John Luly; a PVC coring system):
http://ikarus.jcu.edu.au/TESAG_TESAGers/staff/jlwww/pvc_core/core_pg.htm.

Limnological Research Center, University of Minnesota:
http://www.geo.umn.edu/orgs/lrc/lrc.html

Multiple-entry coring devices designed to retrieve less than about 20 m of sediment are widely available and are not described here. Examples include the hydraulic push corer at the Limnological Research Center of the University of Minnesota (as much as 20 m; Appendix 1); the Merkt-Streif system (Merkt and Streif, 1970); and the modified Livingstone corer (Livingstone, 1965; Wright, 1967, 1980, 1991; Wright et al., 1965). Under favorable circumstances, these systems can recover substantially more than 20 m.

In addition to the platforms listed below, Philipp Hoelzmann (phoe@fub46.zedat.fu-berlin.de) recommends the use of the Jet-Float system: it is a mobile platform made up of several plastic cubes of 50x50 cm (or 100x100 cm). Set together, they form a platform of about 4x4 m up to x6 m. The stability of the platform varies with its size. It can only be used with no or small waves. The address for the cubes is:

Duwe and Partner, Jet-Float,
Bringhaeuser Strasse 6, Yachthof B1, D-34513 Waldeck-Scheid, Germany
Tel.: +49-5634-1242, fax.: +49-5634-1796.

The approximate price is 110 DM for 50x50 cm cube, and 170 DM for 100x100 cm cube.
The prices quoted in the responses are for 1995. The following abbreviations are used for diameters of various drilling pieces: Ø, diameter; iØ, inner diameter; oØ, outer diameter.

A-2.2 The questionnaire

A. - List of equipment available for coring-drilling continental sections for PAGES' purposes.

1. What is the name of the coring-drilling system?

2. Where is it located?

3. What is the name of the contact person (his/her address including
e-mail)?

4. Description of the system:

a) system type: rotation, piston, gravity;
b) inner, outer diameter of the core, of the casing;
c) diameter of the liner, if any, type of liner, transparent or not;
d) method of extrusion if necessary;
e) length of the core barrels;
f) extension rods;
g) tripod;
h) power supply/ies, push force of the engine;
i) winch(es);
j) platform size, raft resistance necessary to extract the core out of the sediment;
k) need of a crane;
l) other.

B. - Transport of equipment

1. What is the total weight of the equipment? Total volume?

2. Is the system portable? How many people? What is the weight of the
heaviest piece?

3. How do you usually carry the equipment from the laboratory to the working site? By truck (yours or rented)? By container? How big?

4. How are the cores transported to the laboratory (cooled, container, etc.)?

C. - Past experience

1. Where was the system used? Location name, type of lake, publication.

2. How deep can your system go? Detail the water depth and the sediment penetration.

3. Can your system work on land as well as from a lake surface and from ice?

D. - Potential of the system

1. What, in your opinion, can be achieved with the system in addition to the experience you have until now (water depth, penetration, etc.)?

2. Can you work at high and low temperatures, and altitudes?

E. - General information

1. How many people are needed in total to operate the system? How many people with experience in using the system are necessary?

2. Does the sediment rotate inside the core barrel? Is it possible to orient the
cores for palaeomagnetic studies?

3. What would be the cost you would ask to rent the equipment as a service for scientific purposes? What is the real cost of operation?

4. What are the other laboratories equipped in the same way?

5. Any other information you think is important

6. Any other contributor that should be contacted, any other type of equipment to be included.

7. What are according to you the major advantages and disadvantages of your equipment for the drilling-coring of PAGES-type palaeorecords? Technical or other ?

DRILLING SYSTEMS: THE RESPONSES