Ian Croudace is a geochemist with more than 40 years research experience, holds an academic position at the University of Southampton (Ocean and Earth Science) and is Director of GAU-Radioanalytical. He is a specialist in several branches of analytical geochemistry including X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, gamma ray spectrometry and radioanalytical chemistry and has published more than 135 papers in the international geochemical and chemical literature. During his career he has supervised 26 PhD students on a variety of geochemical topics. He has also co-developed an industry standard instrument for extracting tritium and C-14 from nuclear and related materials. With NOC colleague Guy Rothwell in 2000 he conceived the fundamental design of what became the prototype Itrax X-ray corescanner. He jointly obtained development funding, identified and commissioned the analytical partner (Cox Analytical) and contributed to the realisation of the first Itrax core scanner that emerged in 2003.

Guy Rothwell is a marine sedimentologist and Curator of the British Ocean Sediment Core Research Facility (BOSCORF), the UK's national deep-sea core repository, located at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. He has participated in over 25 research cruises including two legs of the Ocean Drilling Program. He and colleague Ian Croudace conceived of and secured the funds to realise the prototype Itrax core scanner and contributed to its design. He is author of Minerals and Mineraloids in Marine Sediments (Elsevier Applied Science, 1989) and editor of New Techniques in Sediment Core Analysis (Geological Society of London Special Publication, 2006).

Features papers on the use of micro-XRF sediment core scanners in palaeoenvironmental research

Presents a broad ranging view of instrument capability and points to future developments that will help contribute to higher precision elemental data and faster core analysis

Broadens understanding of an increasingly used analytic technique that has revolutionised the capability to extract high-resolution palaeoenvironmental data from sediment archives

Includes supplementary material: [...]

Part 1 - Marine studies.- Part 2 - Lake and river studies.- Part 3 - Environmental geochemistry and forensic applications.- Part 4 - Technological aspects.- Part 5 - The future of µXRF core scanning.