In the peat and sediment processing lab we analyze the physical, biological, and geochemical characteristics of peat and sediment samples collected from lake, wetland, and peat cores as proxies for past changes to these depositional environments on timescales of decades to millennia. We primarily study terrestrial wetland ecosystems from subtropical to arctic regions in order to understand how they have responded to changes in climate, sea level, and land-use changes. Recent study sites include peat bogs and permafrost plateaus in Alaska, forested swamps in Virginia, and mud islands in Florida Bay. All cores are collected manually. Depending on the depositional environment and types of information we hope to recover, we use a range of coring equipment, including Russian Corer, freeze corer, and vibracorer. In the field, each core is measured, photographed and described in our field log for later reference. Upon return from the field, all core sections are scanned on the GeoTek core logger and stored in our refrigerated core repository. Permafrost cores are kept frozen until they are sampled.