The Department of Geography’s Laboratory of Paleoenvironmental Research in the Science and Engineering Research Facility is dedicated to the study of soils and sediments as archives of climate and environmental history. Directed by Drs. Sally Horn and Yingkui (Philip) Li, the lab includes facilities and equipment for recovering and analyzing sediment cores from lakes and wetlands, sampling and analyzing soil profiles for paleoenvironmental research, and for preparing rock samples for cosmogenic nuclide analysis. Research projects in the Laboratory of Paleoenvironmental Research are supported by grants from NSF to faculty and students, grants and contracts from other federal agencies and private foundations, and by UT’s Office of Research. The photos below show some of the facilities and past and present students in the lab.
Students examining pollen slides in the Laboratory of Paleoenvironmental Research. Photograph shows former Geography M.S. students Joshua Albritton (right) and Ian Slayton, along with undergraduate student Alicia Smith.
Geography Ph.D. student Joanne Ballard (left) and Anthropology Ph.D. students Doug Sain and Megan Hoak sampling a sediment core for pollen analysis.
Geography Ph.D. student Matt Valente using a table top SEM to examine pollen grains.
Geography Ph.D. student Mathew Boehm weighing core samples from a North Carolina bog for loss-on-ignition analysis.
Dr. Maria Caffrey (Ph.D. 2011) processing lake-sediment samples for diatom analysis.
Undergraduate Anthropology major Madison Hammett examining charcoal extracted from the sediments of a pond in the Florida Keys.
Dr. Zachary Taylor (Ph.D. 2011) sampling lake-sediment cores from Costa Rica for high-resolution stable isotope analysis.
Geography M.S. student Rebecca Potter explaining cosmogenic nuclide analysis to students from South Doyle Middle school, as Dr. Yingkui (Philip) Li looks on. Students and faculty in the Laboratory of Paleoenvironmental Research frequently give lab tours and participate in other science outreach.