The Canadian Museum of Nature will be the permanent home of a freeze core extracted from Crawford Lake during research led by Brock University.

Since the 1970s, Brock scientists have been studying the Milton, Ont., lake’s geology and history. More recently, Professor of Earth Sciences Francine McCarthy has led a multi-institutional team that collected and examined layers of sediment on the Lake’s bottom for evidence of human activity.

These sediment layers were frozen onto metal core faces.

One of the freeze cores analyzed for bomb radionuclides will be transferred to the Canadian Museum of Nature, where an event to mark the occasion will be held Thursday, April 11.

“The value of the annually layered sediments that accumulate undisturbed at the bottom of this unusual lake to the natural history of Canada and the world is underscored by our national museum’s commitment to archive this core,” says McCarthy.

To commemorate the transfer, the public is invited to attend the “A Tiny Lake with a Big Environmental Story” educational event from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Canadian Museum of Nature’s Ottawa location at 240 McLeod St.

Tickets are required to attend the free event in person. It will also be livestreamed, which requires registration beforehand.

The evening’s presenters will discuss how sediment cores collected from Crawford Lake show evidence of increased recent human impact.

Remarks will be delivered on behalf of McCarthy, providing an overview of Crawford Lake, its history and why it’s of global scientific interest — whether or not a new Crawfordian Age is ever added to the Geologic Time Scale. Michelle McGinn, Brock’s Acting Vice-President, Research, will also deliver brief remarks.

“The Wendat name for the site near Milton, Ont., is ‘Kionywarihwaen’, which means ‘Where we have a story to tell.’ The sediments have many stories to tell, and there are many ways to tell them — through the arts, humanities and social sciences as well as the natural and physical sciences. We are exploring them all,” she says.

In sediments deposited more than 500 years earlier, pollen evidence of cultivation led to archaeological digs unearthing the remains of a 15th-century Indigenous village close to the lake.

Clear evidence of fundamental planetary change since the mid-20th century trapped in the annual layers of sediment led an international body of scientists to select Crawford Lake as being the best location on Earth to define a potential new epoch in geologic time called the Anthropocene.

The actual transfer of the Crawford Lake core will take place earlier in the day during an invitation-only ceremony at the Museum’s National Biodiversity Cryobank of Canada in Gatineau, Que., which contains a biorepository of specimens from across Canada and abroad.

As part of the formal ceremony in Gatineau, Brock Professor of Earth Sciences Martin Head will speak about recent international developments in his role as member of the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy.

The core will then be placed in a freezer at -180C.

“As part of the museum’s national natural-history collections, the core will be preserved and curated as a permanent marker of human impacts on the environment, accessible to researchers around the world,” says Paul Hamilton, Senior Research Assistant, Botany at the Canadian Museum of Nature.

“As such, the museum will have an important role in preserving the core and its associated scientific evidence for current and future research,” he says. “The core also has significant symbolic and cultural value, given the sacred nature of Crawford Lake for Indigenous Peoples.”

The Crawford Lake research has since branched out to include various perspectives, including research led by Brock Professor of Philosophy Christine Daigle exploring how philosophical thinking, creative writing and artistic explorations can help society reflect on how human activities have impacted the Earth and provoke discussions on environmental sustainability, extinction and the collective future.