Field Equipment
Since much of the work done by professional Earth scientists and geographers takes place in the field, department faculty members believe that students should be exposed to as many field methods as possible. For this reason, the department hosts an extensive array of equipment devoted to field mapping and to soil, lake sediment, and water sampling:
- Lenovo ThinkPad laptops equipped with GIS software
- Apple iPads with Digital Elf GPS receivers
- Groundwater sampling pump
- Electronic logging equipment to measure depth to water in wells
- Groundwater bailers
- Hobo water pressure transducers
- YSI sondes used to measure conductivity, pH, turbidity, dissolved oxygen, and temperature in streams
- Digital and mechanical stream flow meters
- ISCO stream samplers
- Chest waders
- Automatic levels for surveying
- Boat for lake sediment coring
- Livingston corer
- Glew corer
- Ice fishing and soil augurs
- Shovels, trowels, post-hole diggers, and pick axes
- Rock hammers
- Brunton compasses
- Tents, sleeping bags, propane stoves and cookware for field excursions
- Clamshell sediment dredge
- Beta bottle for water sampling at depth
- Secchi disk
- Handheld X-ray fluorescence spectrometer (shared with Chemistry and Art History)