The Department of Geological Sciences occupies 17,000 ft²in the recently completed Bevill Mineral, Material, and Energy Research Building on the University of Alabama campus. Geoscience research in the Department is supported by modern analytical facilities, a state of the art computer facility, and a variety of geological and geophysical field equipment. A wide variety of data resources are readily available to support local, regional, and global geoscience research, including well logs, cores, and seismic data. There is access to additional experimental, field, and analytical equipment on campus and through UA membership in the Oak Ridge Associated Universities and the Incorporated Institutions for Research in Seismology.

The Department is well-equipped for modern quantitative geoscience research:

Analytical Facilities

Sample Preparation

Rock sawing, crushing, pulverizing, sieving, and mineral separation labs
Rock fusion lab
Thin-sectioning, grinding, and polishing labs
Electron optical and microanalytical preparation labs with ion mill, disk punch/cutter/grinder, electrolytic thinner, vacuum evaporator, and ion sputter coater
Low-temperature asher

Wet Chemistry and Spectroscopy

Complete wet chemical labs with clean room
Perkin-Elmer ELAN 6000 automated inductively-coupled plasma mass spectometer
Leeman Plasma III automated 20-channel simultaneous and sequential, inductively-coupled plasma emission spectrograph
Dionex 4000i-series ion chromatograph
Varian 400Z graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrophotometer
Perkin Elmer 560 semi-automated atomic absorption spectrophotometer
Shaimadzu TOC-5000 total organic carbon analyzer
Microprocessor-controlled selective ion analyzer, Jerome gold film mercury detector, fluorimeter
Low temperature hydrothermal experimental flow-through system
Access to multi-nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers, mass spectrometers, gas chromatographs, and a Leco S-C analyzer elsewhere on campus

X-ray Diffraction/Fluorescence

Philips PW2400 X-ray fluorescence spectrometer system
Philips APD3600 automated X-ray powder diffraction system
Access to Enraf-Nonius CAD-4 computer-controlled single- crystal X-ray diffractometers elsewhere on campus

Electron Optical/Microanalytical

Kratos Axis 165 High-sensitivity multi-technique electron spectroscope with scanning auger and mono and micro XPS
JEOL 8600 automated electron probe microanalyzer with 5 wavelength dispersive spectrometers, Tracor-Northern energy dispersive X-ray analysis system, and PC-based backscattered electron and X-ray imaging system
Hitachi 8000 automated 200 keV transmission electron microscope with Tracor-Northern TN-5400 energy dispersive X-ray analysis system
Hitachi 2500B automated scanning electron microscope with backscattered electron detector, Tracor TN-5500 automated energy dispersive X-ray analysis system, and Tracor TN-8500 image analysis system (shared with Biology)

Field Equipment

Geophysical

U/Th field spectrometer, torsion magnetometer
12-channel signal enhancement seismograph
ORE 3.5 KHz high-resolution reflection seismic system
ELICS-DELPHI-1 digital seismic acquisition and process-ing system; PROMAX interactive seismic data processing system
G.P.S. navigation system
Global digital gravity, magnetic, topography, and heat flow datasets with manipulation and visualization software
Access to earth resistivity and ground-penetrating radar systems elsewhere on campus
Access to the Dauphin Island Sea Lab research vessel

Optical/Photographic

Nikon, Leitz, and Olympus research microscopes for transmitted and reflected light microscopy, photomicrography, cathodoluminescence, epifluorescence, coal reflectometry, and universal stage microscopy
Fluid, Inc. heating/freezing stage for fluid inclusion microthermometry
Photographic darkroom with variable dodging and standard color enlargers

Computer Facilities

Hardware

A network of IBM RS6000, SGI, and Sun workstations supports numerically intensive computer applications
High-performance computing is available through access to a CRAY C94A/264 supercomputer at the Alabama Supercomputer Center in Huntsville
Access to SGI Graphics Workstations in the University Visualization Laboratory housed in the Seebeck Computing Center on campus.
Numerous Macintosh and IBM-compatible microcomputers; laser printers; slide maker; and slide and paper scanners are available in the department computing facility.
Large format digitizers, high resolution color plotter and high speed monochrome plotter are housed within the department.
Ethernet local-area network with routing to UA fiber optic/broadband network and the Internet

Arc/Info GIS software
ProMax seismic data processing software
GEOSEC 2-D and 3-D structural imagimg software
Basin Mod 1D and 2D basin modeling software
MODFLOW and MT3D groundwater and contaminant transport modeling software
MATLAB
GMSYS gravity and magnetic modeling software
ROCKWORKS geological data analysis package
Various desktop graphics, word processing, statistical analysis, CAD, and drafting packages
Additional geological and geophysical data processing, visualization, and analysis software is available in the Southeastern Petroleum Technology Transfer Center housed within the department.

Geological and Geophysical Data

Global digital gravity, magnetic, topography, and heat flow datasets with manipulation and visualization software
Extensive crustal seismic reflection data holdings in the Appalachian and Ouachita fold and thrustbelts contributed by Petroleum Industry partners
Extensive high resolution seismic reflection and seabeam data holdings from the Ross Sea, East China Sea, and Gulf of Mexico collected by UA investigators
Access to global seismological datasets and survey equipment through University membership in the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS)