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Experimental Ecosystem Ecology Laboratory
Our lab is equipped with standard soil and plant litter preparation and dissolved organic matter extraction instrumentation (sieves, drying ovens, centrifuges, scales, orbital shakers, and incubators, filtration systems, vacuum lines, ultrapure water). We have a state-of-the art Picarro cavity ring-down mass spectrometer with a recirculating pump for isotope tracing in soil and plant litter incubations, a Hanna multilogger probe equipped with pH, DO, EC, temperature, and turbidity for water quality monitoring, a Shimadzu TOC-L for dissolved organic carbon and total dissolved nitrogen analysis in liquid samples, and a Topcon total system for RTK point surveys. We are currently fabricating a stable isotope labeling greenhouse facility to produce isotopically enriched plant litter and root exudates.
Biogeochemistry Core Facility
The Biogeochemistry Core Facility is located across the quad in the IRIC building. The facility houses equipment necessary to assess a broad array of soil chemical, physical, and biological properties, including the determination of 13C in various pools, and standard equipment for culture-based or molecular work, including sample processing, DNA extraction, conventional or quantitative PCR, gel electrophoresis, and DNA quantification and purification. This space also provides the capacity to assess microbial community function via extracellular enzyme activity and compound-specific stable isotope analysis. Instrumentation includes an Infrared Gas Analyzer (LI-7000 and LI-8100; Li-Cor) to determine respiration rates in the field and lab, a Costech – ECS 4014, which can be coupled with the CRDS to determine 13C of samples in soil samples, a Lachat QuikChem® 8500 FIA System with an inline digestion unit to determine total and organic nutrient concentrations in liquids and soil extracts, a SpectraMax M2 (Molecular Devices) microplate reader for the analysis of extracellular enzyme activity and Biolog plates, a thermocycler (BioRad T100), real-time thermocyler (BioRad C1000), PCR workstation (Labconco), and DNA extraction equipment.
University of Idaho Core Facilities
There are multiple core facility labs located on campus to support higher-resolution molecular work including NMR, Mass Spectrometry, Electron Microscopy, Genomics, and Computational Core Facilities (please use embedded links to review available resources and instrumentation).
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