Facilities and Equipment

Jonathan Overpeck is director or co-director of several laboratories in the Department of Geosciences that were established explicitly for lake sediment and paleoclimatic research. Facilities available to staff and students of the Environmental Studies Laboratory include walk-in cold room and freezer core storage and laboratories for sediment analysis, image processing and analysis, and pollen processing and counting.

Sediment analysis equipment includes an x-ray facility, a Bartington MS2 magnetic susceptibility sensor, ultrasonic baths, drying ovens, microbalances, microscopes, vacuum lines, a UIC carbon coulometer, a scanning micro-x-ray fluorescence spectrometer (scanning µ-XRF), and a laser particle size analyzer. There are also freeze driers and a class 100 laminar flow bench for contamination-free microscope work.

We are always improving our image analysis facility for work with laminated sediments. Current equipment consists of an advanced computer workstation with capabilities for video and microscope image processing and numerous software packages. Very high magnification, electron backscatter, and geochemical mapping can be carried out with the laboratory's scanning µ-XRF, or with one of several electron microscope and microprobe facilities in the Department of Geosciences or elsewhere on the University of Arizona campus.

Available in the Department of Geosciences are a stable isotope mass spectrometer and geochemistry laboratory for trace metal analyses, a Micromass Optima mass spectrometer for carbon and oxygen with an Isocarb automated carbonate preparation device, a Finnigan 252 mass spectrometer for carbon and oxygen with a Kiel III individual acid bath preparation system, a Finnigan DELTA plus mass spectrometer, and a new Finnigan continuous flow ratio mass spectrometer for carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen with a carbon-nitrogen analyzer. An isotope ratio mass spectrometer facility is being installed in the Department of Geosciences for Dr. Mike Evans.

Also available in the Department of Geosciences are other paleoenvironmental sediment laboratories with x-ray diffraction (XRD) equipment, an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICPMS), a Micromass IsoProbe multicollector-ICPMS, and a new inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometer (ICP-AES). The Department of Geosciences and Department of Physics run the National Science Foundation-funded Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, which recently installed a second accelerator mass spectrometry instrument, allowing new radionuclide studies of 10Be, 26Al, and 129I in addition to 14C work.

For our increasing number of studies on climate-ecosystem interactions of the present and the future, advanced computer stations are on hand for staff and students of the Environmental Studies Laboratory. These stations include several modeling and data processing and analysis programs including ArcGIS geographical information system software.

Mailing Address
1040 E. Fourth St.
Department of Geosciences
University of Arizona
Gould-Simpson Room 208
Tucson, AZ 85721-0077

Telephone Number
1.520.621.8025

Facsimile Number
1.520.621.2672

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Environmental Studies Laboratory, Department of Geosciences, The University of Arizona
All contents © 2003 Arizona Board of Regents
Send comments or questions to Jeremy Weiss, jlweiss@email.arizona.edu

Earth image retreived from http://www.osei.noaa.gov/Events/Unique/ on 14 January 2003

Last updated May 26, 2005
Document located at http://www.geo.arizona.edu/dgesl/about/facilitiesandequipment/facilitiesandequipment.htm