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Surface Water Quality Sediment Lab
 
858 Dow Environmental Sciences & Engineering
As the final resting place for many of the pollutants which enter a lake, bottom sediments can play a significant role in governing water quality. The topmost few centimeters of a lake's sediment may contain more organic matter, algal nutrients, and toxic chemicals than the all of the water in the lake. In case after case in the Great Lakes and smaller inland waters, it is the presence of pollutants in the bottom sediments which retards the recovery and restoration of water quality. Environmental engineers are interested in a variety of problems relating to sediments, including heavy metal (e.g. mercury) cycling, nutrient (e.g. phosphorus) release, and sulfur dynamics relating to acid rain inputs. The sediments lab will house a sediment core extruder, sophisticated radioisotope instruments for sediment dating, and a suite of analytical instrumentation for determining the chemical content of sediments.

This lab is closely linked to the Environmental Chambers (810 and 817 Dow), a group of five controlled environment rooms and two stand-alone units where light, temperature, and humidity can be manipulated in conducting experiments on sediment behavior. The kinetics lab is conceived as the ultra-clean counterpart to the Surface Water Quality Field Prep (816 Dow) and Kinetics (858 Dow) Laboratories.


Michigan Technological University
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
1400 Townsend Drive
Houghton, Michigan, 49931 - 1295, USA
Department Phone: 1-906-487-2520
Department Fax: 1-906-487-2943
Department E-mail: cee@mtu.edu