Clean Your Room

Benjamin Birner, a 2013 WHOI Summer Student Fellow prepares sediment samples in the NIRVANA clean room at WHOI. Birner measured the sediments radiogenic isotopic composition in hopes of identifying how certain sediments like strontium and lead were transported from their original sources to where they were collected, in this case the Black Sea. This “fingerprint” type process is used to identify certain sediments produced from geological terrains of varying ages often found in large watershed areas like that of the Danube River.(Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)