The British Ocean Sediment Core Research Facility (BOSCORF) is a unique and internationally-recognised facility providing the UK community with some of the best core logging facilities available in Europe. It provides research facilities used in all NERC Theme Science Priority Areas and contributes directly to NERC Directed and Core Programmes and high-profile international projects. Its state-of-the-art facilities underpin crucial UK research in all areas encompassed by the NERC mission.
BOSCORF was founded as a NERC facility in 1997 and the core repository was extended in 2001, this extension was envisaged as providing storage for the next ten years of core acquisition (i.e. to 2011). Since 2001, BOSCORF's core holdings have increased very significantly with 2014 alone seeing a 20% increase in core material held. In 2018, the total volume of sediment cores held within BOSCORF is 8.8 km, which equates to £295 million investment by NERC in ship time for their collection.
Since 2014, the number of users per year has more than doubled and the number of Ph.D. students supported by the facility has increased threefold. Recent years have also seen a marked widening of the BOSCORF user base to include archaeologists, geographers and biomedical researchers in addition to marine geologists. This demonstrates the importance of BOSCORF facilities in a wide range of research areas.