Field and Laboratory
The Pollen and Paleoecology Laboratory, housed in CCR, is available to all CPEP faculty, researchers and students. This includes access to soil, peat, and lake sediment coring equipment including a Hiller peat corer, a Livingstone piston corer for lake sediment, and several freeze corers, as well as other field research tools.
Laboratory facilities include analytic equipment, numerous microscopes (transmitted light, polarizing, reflected light, and binocular), and sophisticated microscope imaging systems for microfossil study, and a Velmex system for tree ring measurement. The Pollen lab has one of the few fume hoods available on campus rated for hydrofluoric acid (HF) use. HF is essential for pollen extraction from sediment samples and can only be used with careful instruction and supervision by a competent technician. This supervision is currently available only in the CPEP-CCR facility.
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Filling gelatin capsules with ground lake sediment for environmental magnetism studies |
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Using chemical extraction techniques to prepare samples for pollen and cladoceran analyses
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Undergraduate and Graduate Education
Instruction in various Quaternary microfossil retrieval and identification techniques is also provided here as well as a modern reference collection of pollen and a library of mirco-and-marco fossil identification guides. This facility has a unique combination of scientists providing analysis of pollen, seeds and other plant parts, diatoms, charcoal, tree rings cladocera (zooplankton), and testate amoeba. Additionally, working relationships with laboratories and scientists in the UW departments of Botany, Geology, and Geography and the Limnological Research Center at the University of Minnesota, extends the analytic and collaborative capabilities of CPEP affiliates and students using field-based paleoecological and paleoclimatological techniques. |
