Facilities and Equipment

The Earth Sciences building is laid out across three floors, providing focused spaces for research, support, teaching and specialised equipment.  Academic staff, PDRAs and PhD students are located on Level 3, providing a mutually-supportive research environment. Research support and administrative staff are accommodated on Level 2, which includes four large teaching and seminar spaces, whilst technical staff are housed on Level 1 where the main research equipment facilities  are located in purpose-built laboratories.

Facilities include:

• DGC (Durham Geochemistry Centre) analytical geochemistry laboratories, comprising the stable isotope laboratory, ICP-OES, PIMMS, TIMS and ICP-MS facilities
• Environmental Geochemistry Laboratories, including ion and gas chromatographs, IR gas analysers, DOC analysis and field-based equipment
• OBIF (Ocean Bottom Instrumentation Facility), the national seabed geophysical equipment pool.
• Rock Sectioning Laboratory
• Rock Mechanics Laboratory
• Earth Visualisation Laboratory - Seismic data processing, interpretation and visualisation facilities.
• Microscopy and textural analysis, including the faculty electron microscopy facility (SEM, TEM)
• Durham Terrestrial Laser Scanning Facility (DuLTS)
• Experimental Petrology
• Sedimentology and Sample Processing laboratory. 
• Volcanological Fluid Dynamics Laboratory with extensive facilities for analogue experimental investigations
• GeoRheo facility for rheometry of geological materials up to 1600C and 1000 bar