Community reccomendations for best practices for Ice Core sampling and naming conventions

This document is based on a US community recommendations for documenting Ice core metadata: e.g., Sites naming conventions, sampling (IGSN assignment), and data management.

Attached files: IceCorePointTemplate.* provided in MS Excel, Open Office and CSV formats.

We encourage the US ice core community to follow the following ice core borehole site naming standard:

• Abbreviated name of the ice core Hole (borehole or site) or trench: e.g., SPC (South Pole Core), WDC (West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide ice core), SDM (Siple Dome Ice Core), ALHIC (Allan Hills Blue Ice Area Ice Core), MLT (Mt. Moulton Blue Ice Area Trench).
• Two-digit number representing the year when drilling/trenching started: e.g., 14 (2014), 06 (2006), 92 (1992)
• A letter for the ice core borehole ID: e.g., A for WDC-06A or WDC-05A

In the provided template, the main ice core drilled from the South Pole (SPC) in 2014 is labeled: SPC-14-A

Feel free to contact the authors if you have questions or a complex situation with multiple ice cores collected from the same borehole by different projects over a number of years.