Svalbard Rock Vault: towards safeguarding geological cores and borehole data

Continuous sedimentary drill cores provide crucial data for deciphering past climate variations and characterizing the subsurface for the energy industry (e.g., coal, petroleum, CO2 storage, geothermal energy). The Norwegian High-Arctic archipelago of Svalbard offers a diverse geological record that...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Polar research Vol. 44; pp. 1 - 12
Main Authors: Senger, Kim, Jochmann, Malte M.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Spånga Open Academia 21.10.2025
Norwegian Polar Institute
Subjects:
Archipelagoes
archive
Archives & records
Boreholes
Carbon capture and storage
Carbon dioxide
co2 storage
Coal mining
Core storage
Cores
Data integration
drill cores
Drilling
Drills
Earth science
Geology
geothermal
Geothermal energy
Knowledge management
Museums
open data
Petroleum
Petroleum industry
repository
Rock
Rocks
Storage facilities
United Kingdom > UK
Norway
ISSN:0800-0395, 1751-8369
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Continuous sedimentary drill cores provide crucial data for deciphering past climate variations and characterizing the subsurface for the energy industry (e.g., coal, petroleum, CO2 storage, geothermal energy). The Norwegian High-Arctic archipelago of Svalbard offers a diverse geological record that has been investigated by geoscientists for both scientific and applied projects, with hundreds of boreholes drilled over the past century. Unfortunately, much crucial data, including physical material from the boreholes, have been lost. The Svalbard Rock Vault project aims to safeguard drill cores, cuttings and hand samples from Svalbard and facilitate their scientific reuse. We aim to establish a physical core storage repository in, or near, Longyearbyen, Svalbard. In parallel, ongoing digitization and data integration efforts are improving access to complementary non-physical material, including hard-to-access reports, wireline logs and interpretations. In this contribution, we report on the motivation and background of the Svalbard Rock Vault project, synthesize current knowledge about physical subsurface material from Svalbard, and present a vision of an improved physical core storage facility near Longyearbyen.
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ISSN:0800-0395
1751-8369
DOI:10.33265/polar.v44.11413