Research in Physical Geography is supported by a number of modern, well-equipped laboratories which are used by students for research and can also be utilised for external commercial work.
Physical Geography Field and Laboratory Facilities
The School of Geography, Politics and Sociology has modern laboratories, field equipment stores and workshops spread over four buildings and containing a range of facilities and specialist equipment for use in both teaching and research.
Our Geomorphology, Sediment, Chemistry and Biology laboratories are used for a combination of teaching and research while our research specific laboratories comprise Organic Geochemistry and Palaeoecology laboratories, a Spatial Analysis laboratory, and a Cosmogenic Isotope laboratory. All laboratories are equipped for computer network access and have either been recently built or refurbished. We also have 2 walk-in cold rooms for sample storage, an outside store and workshop, and a landrover.
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Field equipment
Field equipment includes a range of technologies for topographic survey (including levels, hand-held GPS, robotic and manual total stations, laser range-finders and Leica differential GPS), soil and sediment sampling (including powered and hand-operated corers and augers suitable for both inorganic and organic sediment sequences and gravity and piston corers for use in lakes), biological and chemical analysis (aquatic kick nets, YSI water column chemistry sonde, portable HACH-Lange spectrophotometers, ultra-meters), hydrological analysis (including stage recorders, rugged digital cameras and multi-parameter probes) and three inflatable boats with outboard motors.
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Links with facilities in other schools
In addition to the above facilities we have strong links with Civil Engineering and Geosciences where we have additional access to a wide range of both standard and specialized field and analytical equipment (e.g. rock crushing equipment, Total Organic Carbon (TOC) analysers, Gas Chromatography (GC), Gas Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry (GCMS), High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC), Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (LCMS) and related facilities).
Find out more about our state-of-the-art laboratories: