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Finding History

Columns of sediment known as cores taken from coastal ponds and marshes reveal layers of sand, silt, and other material deposited over the years, including during extreme storms and hurricanes . These sedimentary archives allow WHOI geologist Jeffrey Donnelly and colleagues in his lab to recontstruct a record of these events over centuries and even millennia. Here, a former MIT-WHOI Joint Program student, Jon Woodruff, forces a sampler into Little Sippewissett Marsh in Falmouth, Mass., to extract the sample. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)