Institute For Environmental Studies

Environmental Science Research Laboratories

Welcome to the Environmental Science (ES) Laboratories at WIU-QC!  This facility serves as a hub for analytic work conducted by Ph.D. students engaged laboratory and field studies throughout the region. While this site is intended primarily for students in the Ph.D. program, visitors are welcome to learn what we do, what equipment we use, and how we conduct a variety of aquatic environmental analyses in the field and in the lab.   Ideally, this will serve as a first point of reference when you're looking for analytic methods, equipment specifications, guidance for data reduction as well as quality assurance and quality control issues, and safety in the field and in the lab.Ph.D. students working in the laboratory Undergraduate student working in the laboratory

In the field, ES Ph.D. students have access to a full complement of ruggedized water quality meters in addition to data loggers for longer term in situ monitoring; this includes an electromagnetic flow meter that can be used to quantify water velocities in three dimensions. The ES laboratories are outfitted with the instrumentation needed to support a broad variety of aquatic research; this includes an EMD Millipore Elix ®  Advantage 10 water purification system, a climate controlled centrifuge, an analytic balance, drying ovens, and a muffle furnace.  This equipment is complimented by automatic titrators, and scanning ultraviolet/visible light spectrophotometers (including a low volume "sipper" flow cell).  A Thermo Scientific iCE 3300 atomic absorption spectrophotometer equipped with a six lamp carousel and a 240 slot autosampler is also available to support student research. Contact Prof. Roger Viadero for additional information about physical and chemical analysis of water and sediments.

The latest geospatial survey instrumentation is available to students who require high-accuracy mapping and GIS data collection capabilities for their research.  This includes a Trimble® Geo 7X equipped with a Trimble® Tornado™ antenna.  The group also maintains 9 computer workstations dedicated primarily to advanced GIS Analysis; however, these systems can also be used for other computing-intensive modeling tasks.  Geospatial and geomorphological studies are conducted by Dr. Ranbir Kang in WIU's Department of Geography.

Students with research interests in environmental microbiology and mycology are supported by Dr. Catherine Miller-Hunt and Dr. Andrea Porras-Alfaro, respectively, who have laboratories located on WIU's Macomb campus.