Author Knights, K.V. Contributor Heath, P.J.
The Geological Survey of Ireland conducted several regional geochemical surveys in parts of Ireland in the
1980s, and some of the sampled materials remain in the Geological Survey of Ireland (GSI) archive. As part
of the Tellus project led by the GSI (www.tellus.ie), being conducted nationally, a selection of archived
samples of stream sediment that were collected from southeast Ireland in the 1980s have been revisited
and reanalysed in order to be integrated with recent systematic geochemical surveying. Sampling
methodologies are described in O'Connor and Reimann (1993) and are broadly similar to those used in the
national stream sediment sampling programme, and are not discussed further here. Stream sediment
samples, denoted sample type ‘C’, were collected from first, second and occasionally third-order streams
and wet-sieved at site to collect the <150 µm fraction of stream bed sediment. Samples were collected
from 1955 unique sites across the main survey area which includes counties Wicklow and Wexford and
straddles parts of counties Dublin, Kildare, Carlow, Tipperary and Waterford, at a typical density of one
sample per four km2.