Extracting High Quality Mud from Cedar Creek Bog

Tom Lowell and graduate student Stephanie Allard from Cincinnati and Jacklyn Rodriguez from the University of Illinois made the trip to Morrow County to core mud from a bog adjacent to the Cedar Creek Mastodon site. We will be working with the cores in Climate Change over the next several weeks and collaborating with this team.

Extracting a meter of marl with many species of snails and even clams? We will need Dr. Wilson’s help on this.

Another meter of marl.

Stephanie describes the lower “glacial lake clays”, while Jacklyn takes notes.

Adjacent to our work is the excavation of the Cedar Creek Mastodon. The tripods are the sieves and the actual excavation is under the tent.

A closer look at the stratigraphy in the excavation – we hope to be able to link the bog cores to this site. It may take a backhoe pit from the excavation to the bog to really understand how the stratigraphy here links with the former lake.

Another meter to complete this 7-meter core. This layer represents the late glacial (~13,000 years ago) about the time when the Mastodon roamed the shores.

The master takes another core. We look forward to the analyses of the cores that include an upper anthropogenic layer, a peat, a marl, an interval of gyttja and blue clays.

A special thanks to Clint Walker who owns the site for his interest and permission to core. Clint helped out moving our gear with his tractor and saved us hours of shuttling. Jesse Wiles provided photographs and carried gear.