An OSU Facility supported by the National Science Foundation
Welcome to the Paleo-and-Environmental Magnetism Laboratory in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University. The P-Mag Lab is an NSF supported OSU facility dedicated to sediment magnetism and a resource for Pacific NW, national and international scientific communities.
The U-Channel Magnetometer
The P-Mag Lab is built around the unique capabilities of the liquid helium free 2G Enterprises superconducting rock magnetometer (SRM) optimized for u-channel samples. U-channel samples are rigid u-shaped plastic liners (2 x 2 cm cross-section) that completely enclose cored sediments up to 1.5 m in length. This state-of-the-art system provides the capability to rapidly acquire high quality environmental and paleomagnetic data continuously on u-channel samples. The several orders of magnitude increase in data acquisitions allows new archives to be explored and older ones to be more thoroughly examined. Discrete samples can also be rapidly measured with this system.
Our Research
Our approach is to use the high throughput of the u-channel SRM to:
- Reconstruct the space/time patterns of the geomagnetic field.
- Develop and employ geomagnetic change as a stratigraphic dating tool.
- Reconstruct environmental variability through the rock magnetic response to laboratory magnetizations.
Materials for study come from a wide range of sources, including international science programs such as the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program and the International Continental Drilling Program, PI driven field programs and retrospective research on the large core collection available at the OSU-Marine Geology Repository.
Recent Blog Posts
New Greenland Icesheet publication in Nature
duUsing sediment core evidence taken from the sea floor off Greenland’s coast Rob Hatfield and Joe Stoner of the P-mag lab in collaboration with Anders Carlson (OSU) and Alberto Reyes (U. Alberta) and others were able to estimate the extent of the Greenland Ice Sheet...
Oh ho ho it’s MagIC
du Next week the P-Mag Lab's Rob Hatfield, Leah Ziegler, and Sarah Strano will be attending the three day MagIC workshop in La Jolla CA at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UCSD. Rob will be presenting a poster similar to that he presented at last years AGU Fall...
Gearing Up For Sampling
duNext week the PMag-Lab in conjunction with the OSU Marine Geology Repository are hosting two researchers from the University of Pittsburg. Aubrey Hillman (Ph.D. student) and Dr. Darren Larsen (Post Doc.), both work with Dr. Mark Abbott and are interested in the...