Alaska Boreal Forest Soils Lab

The UAF Forest Soils lab is a shared-use facility at UAF located in 335 O'Neill on the UAF Troth Yeddha’ campus.

Staff, students, and faculty can access a wide range of equipment to prepare and analyze soil and other solid organic matter for carbon and nitrogen content. A mass spectrometer is also available and can analyze gas, solid and liquid samples for carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and sulfur. It includes a laser ablation system, which expands the ability to analyze small samples such as tree rings on a sub-annual scale, hair, small sections of leaves, etc., for carbon isotope composition.

Equipment

Contact

Jessie Young-Robertson
Research Associate Professor

Lab Managers
Sam Dempster (sldempster@alaska.edu
Matt Robertson (mrober57@alaska.edu)

Equipment includes:

drying ovens

fume hoods

exetainer evacuation line

bench space

glassware

balances (precision and coarse scale)

soil preparation room

soil grinder

digester

ball mill for fine sample grinding.

 

For analysis:

Agilent Technologies 4200 MP-AES

Ankom 200 Fiber Analyzer

LECO

Delta V Plus Mass Spectrometer, including Elemental Analyzer, ConFlo IV Universal Interface, autosampler for liquid water, Gas Bench II, combustion furnace, and ESL NWR213 Laser ablation system. 

 

Access is with permission only, so please reach out to lab contacts if you need to arrange to use the lab facility. Fees are associated with the use of the soil grinder and for elemental/stable isotope analyses.