preliminaryreportonthepalaeomagnetismandenvironmental.docVIP

Preliminary Report on the Palaeomagnetism and Environmental Magnetism of the Pukaki Core. Gillian M. Turner 1, Kenneth L. Verosub 2 , Irena Delusina 2, and Alessandra Venuti2 1 Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand 2 University of California at Davis, USA Introduction. Magnetic measurements provide a rapid, non-destructive means of obtaining high-resolution logs of long sedimentary sequences. When a sediment is deposited on the bed of a lake or an ocean, fine-grained magnetic particles that already carry a stable magnetic moment may align parallel to the Earth’s magnetic field. This palaeomagnetic record provides information about the behaviour of the geomagnetic field through time, or if the history of that behaviour is already known for a particular region, the palaeomagnetic record can serve as a high-resolution dating method. On the other hand, the mineralogy, concentration and grain-size distribution of the magnetic particles are often influenced by physical and chemical processes associated with the formation, transport, deposition and post-depositional alteration of the grains. This environmental magnetic record provides information about the origin of the grains and about the palaeoclimatic or other environmental processes that have subsequently affected them. We are conducting a combined palaeomagnetic and environmental magnetic study of the Pukaki core. Magnetic susceptibility was logged soon after each core run was delivered to the laboratory at Auckland University, usually within 24 hours of drilling. The sequence of procedures that were followed when the runs arrived in the laboratory is detailed in the introduction to this volume. After the core runs had been logged and split, we collected u-channel samples from the lacustrine section of the core (see below). The u-channel samples are being used to measure a suite of palaeomagnetic and environmental magnetic properties. In this paper we present the initial results of our work, w