The geomorphology lab affords a working space for students. It houses glassware, coarse/fine sediment size analyses, sediment/soil physical (e.g., Atterberg limits, water content), ovens and chemical (e.g., TDS, EC, pH and chemical-photometer-determinations), as well as other equipment for graduate students and for the geomorphology lab class offered once every two years.
Field Gear
Field equipment includes a neutron probe for soil moisture determination, Zeiss level and a two electronic total stations (electronic theodolites), one reflector-less based on infra-red capability, and a sensitive metal detector for metal tracer studies. We also run a time domain reflectometer together with the Agrometeorolgy Unit and a frequency domain reflectometer, both of which are for measuring soil moisture using radar wavelength electromagnetic energy. We also have 13 corner reflectors for calibrating radar imagery collected from orbit, a low cost GPS system and a differential GPS system. The lab has field kits for the determination of water chemistry. We also have regular, high-end (Nikon 300D) and 2 video cameras and a suit of laptops. For infiltration we house a large double ring infiltrometer and a Gulelph infiltrometer. A host of additional physical laboratory equipment is housed in the soils and aeolian labs.
The lab includes a dozen Grant and Campbell data loggers for automatic monitoring of fluvial processes, a large number of water stage (depth) sensors including miniature "Divers", temperature sensors, high-end turbidity units and EC sensors, as well as plate and pipe geophones for continuous bedload monitoring. The data loggers have connections to the various sensors. Several automatic instruments include one (or more) sensor with in-built digital datalogger: tipping rain gages, Unidata Doppler-velocity (& stage - temperature) Starflow instruments, and a dozen automatic (ISCO, SIGMA, Liquiport) water samplers. The lab houses a surface roughness profiler (BGU GSS 1800) to acquire dense digital outputs describing surface roughness.
