Marine Minerals Laboratory
Learn about the Marine Minerals Laboratory Suite at the USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center in Santa Cruz, California.
In the Marine Minerals laboratory suite, we have an X-ray diffractometer (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectrophotometer, rock saw, shatterbox, and petrographic microscopes. We do mineral identification and classification, molecular identification, and rock cutting and sampling, and we prepare samples for XRD and geochemical techniques.