Laboratories and Facilities

The Environment and Natural Resources Institute supports two laboratories.

The Applied Science and Engineering Technology Laboratory (ASET) lab  is a state of the art interdisciplinary laboratory equipped with GC-FID, GC-MS, ICP-MS and LC MS/MS instruments. The instruments are used for quantitative analysis from low level persistent organic pollutions (POP’s), drugs, natural organic compounds, trace metals, and anions in diverse matrixes ranging from water, soils, and plants to animal tissue. It is a leading laboratory in the state for fatty acid analysis in marine mammals, birds and, human plasma. The laboratory is used for research in Biology, Geology, Engineering and Ecology, for instrumental chemistry class and in several outreach activities.

The Stable Isotope Lab (ENRI-SILS) is a state-of-the-art analytical facility that uses stable isotopes (dD, d¹³C, d¹⁵N, d¹⁸O) to understand biological, hydrologic, climatic and atmospheric processes on short and long time scales. Portions of our research focuses on: a) marine-terrestrial nutrient linkages using d¹⁵N, b) leaf and plant-level carbon (d¹³C), water (d¹⁸O & dD) and nutrient relations in response to natural gradients and climate change experiments and c) metabolic processes of small arctic mammals.  The laboratory is leading the analysis of precipitation samples collected each Tuesday across the entire US as a part of the US Network for Isotopes in Precipitation (USNIP)