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
The P-mag Lab on the Move (Literally)
In December, there was a fire in Burt Hall. Thankfully, the P-mag Lab survived with very minimal damage, but the building around us needs a lot of work. So today, Joe, Brendan and our friends Dave and Chris from 2-G Enterprises took apart the magnetometer and moved...
The P-mag Lab at the 2018 AGU Fall Meeting
The OSU P-mag Lab is headed to Washington D.C. next week for the 2018 AGU Fall Meeting. If you are there, learn about some of the research we are working on, including projects from the Bay of Bengal, Peru, Northern North Atlantic, Western North America, Nares Strait,...
Late Pleistocene Western North American PSV Paper Now Online at QSR!
The OSU P-mag Lab's study on Late Pleistocene Western North American Paleomagnetic Secular Variation (PSV) is now available online at Quaternary Science Reviews. It is titled, "Regionally consistent Western North America paleomagnetic directions from 15 to 35 ka:...