The Paleo Lab at Berry supports a variety of research centered on the analysis of soils and sediments.

Lab Equipment
Presently, the lab has a commercial refrigerator for sample storage and equipment to support a wide variety of geochemical analyses, macroscopic charcoal analysis, pollen sample processing, and preparation of samples for various isotopic analyses.  The lab also has compound and dissecting microscopes that are used for counting charcoal fragments, identifying macrofossils, palynologic analysis, and other applications.

Field Equipment

The lab is able to collect sediments with four different coring devices.  A specially-modified plastic tube corer is used to collect soft sediments in less than 10m of water.  Deeper sediments in water of similar depth are collected using a Livingstone piston corer.  For deep-water applications, sediments are collected with a custom-made gravity corer, including the capability of recovering multiple cores from the same hole.  We also have a Russian peat borer for collecting material from bogs and fens.

The lab also has the necessary equipment to construct a coring platform and transport sediment.