Equipment

Here are some pictures of the equipment used for loss-on-ignition analysis, palynology, and field research. Click on the thumbnails for a larger view.

The Barnstead Furnace	The Russian Peat Borer	Coring Tubes
Rubber Boats	Livingstone Coring Equipment	Livingstone Coring Equipment

The Paleoecology Lab is equipped with one fume hood for processing pollen and sediment samples; three research-grade optical microscopes (two Nikon Optiphot and one Olympus BHS) for pollen counting, one of which is mounted with a Microflex HFX-II camera system for photomicrography; one dissecting microscope; an electronic balance; an oven; two muffle furnaces; four centrifuges; and camera systems for sediment core photography. The lab also houses a modern pollen reference collection consisting of over 2,500 temperate and tropical pollen taxa from North America, South America, and East Asia, and a large collection of Chinese palynological literature and geoscience journals and books.

Field equipment includes a variety of Livingstone-type piston corers, a Russian-type peat auger, an Acker diamond core drill for hard-rock drilling, 50 m of extension rods and casing, an Ekman's dredge, an electronic depth finder (sonar), two Garmin Global Positioning Systems (GPS), a laser range finder, four rubber boats, and an outboard motor.

The lab has four Pentium computers, a 1200 dpi scanner, and one LaserJet printer. TILIA, Canvas, and GIS software is available for use during research.