EARTHLAB Chrono Uran

The laboratory is a combined preparation facility doing wet-chemistry samples for Th/U and ²¹⁰Pb dating of Quaternary materials (speleothems and sediment cores) in a clean-lab environment. We have a processing line for speleothems (stalagmites and flowstones) with casting, sectioning and preparation of thin wafers for dating, isotope and other climatic proxy analyses (organics, trace element and fluorescent banding).

Focussed on cave deposits, it is also a "karst laboratory", performing wet-chemistry rock analyses, analyses of cave minerals, water chemistry and dissolution kinetics of carbonate rocks at normal and elevated pressures. The laboratory also has equipment for groundwater tracing, using fluorescent dyes. The laboratory is an integrated part of teaching the departments' karst course (GEOV221), and is used by graduate students in karst geology and speleology.