Calibration of a point-counting technique for estimation of biogenic silica in marine sediments
The simple technique of point counting is very quick and is suitable for shipboard use, or in any study where high accuracy is not necessary. Point-counting smear slides yields results different from measurements of weight-percent silica if there are systematic differences in shape and density of biogenic and terrigenous grains. In this note I present calibration curves for synthetic biogenic-terrigenous mixtures, to show how the accuracy of point counting may be improved.