Facilities
Since its establishment in 1995 SCIDR has had access to a range of specialist world-class facilities which have enabled key dryland research to be carried out ‘in house’. These include the Solute sediment systems and micromorphology laboratories as well as equipment like differential GPS and anemometer arrays. Research within SCIDR makes particular use of:-
Luminescence Dating Laboratory
Quartz rich sandy sediments, which are otherwise undateable by conventional radiocarbon methods, can be absolutely dated within a range of 10 to 300,000+ years using Luminescence dating. The luminescence facility has a suite of laboratories which are fully equipped to isolate and clean the appropriate grain size mineral fractions from samples under controlled darkroom conditions and for measurement both at single aliquot and single grain levels. For further details click here to go to the facilities web pages or contact Mark D. Bateman (m.d.bateman@sheffield.ac.uk).
Sheffield Spectroscopy Laboratory
Reflectance spectroscopy is the study of light as a function of wavelength that has been reflected or scattered from a solid, liquid, or gas. Spectroscopy is therefore a field and laboratory research tool that can be used to identify and map specific materials by detecting specific chemical bonds. As a result it is an excellent tool for environmental assessments, mineral mapping and exploration, vegetation communities/species and health studies, and general land management studies. For further details click here to go to the facilities web pages or contact Robert G. Bryant (r.g.bryant@sheffield.ac.uk).