ODNR Core Lab Workshop

On April 20th, I assisted with the Ohio Department of natural Resource's (ODNR) Ohio Geological Survey's (OGS) first core workshop. As a board member on OGS's Collins Core Repository, we decided that we could provide the public with a better understanding of how rock cores are collected, analyzed, and used, and that we could teach them how to recognize Ohio's various rock formations when they examine cores.

The morning consisted of presentations on Paleozoic bedrock from Ohio's Chief Geologist, Larry Wickstrom, Assistant Chief Mac Swinford, and Greg Schumacher and Mike Angle of the OGS. Brian Mott of DLZ and I discussed the collection and interpretation of the younger Ice Age sediments. In the afternoon, students did hands-on exercises with the cores. We had a turnout of 30 people of various backgrounds and experience levels. The results were very positive, and we plan to repeat the exercise later in 2010. We assembled a workbook for the exercise that includes fact sheets for the Glacial Sand and Gravel, Ohio Shale, Berea Sandstone, and other formations that are encountered in Central Ohio. Over time, the workshop will be expanded to cover other parts of Ohio. When the workbook is put on ODNR's website, we'll add a link to it from the Cox-Colvin website.