Lab Resource

VAL LAB

The Variable Atmosphere and Light (VAL) lab is an Science Foundation Ireland and Trinity College Dublin jointly funded National Infrastructure for plant science and global change research. The VAL consist of six walk-in experimentally controlled climate chambers with full control of light intensity and spectra, temperature, humidity, atmospheric composition and diurnal cycle. The CONVIRON PGC20 plant growth chambers are instrumented with infra-red phenotyping platform (Optris PI thermal imaging cameras), full solar spectrum LED lights (VALOYA DNA lights) and many other state-of-the-art environmental sensors and control systems. The VAL climatic chambers can simulate a weaker solar strength for deep time intervals, full sun and cloud dynamic effect of light spectrum and dynamic temperature and relative humidity and all in an elevated atmospheric CO2 (400 to 2000 ppm) environment. This is possible by the use of ARGUS climate controllers that simulate past solar, atmospheric and climatic conditions under dynamic field-like conditions.

Lab Resource

Palaeobiology Lab

The palaeoecology lab supports a variety of equipment and facilities to support field and lab based research. This includes a range of sediment coring equipment and inflatable boats; a cold room storage facility for sediment cores and a suite of laboratories. The labs include a dirty lab for subsampling and sediment description, a chemical lab with fume hood for sediment digestion and sample preparation and a microscope lab with a range of dissection and compound microscopes, a pollen reference collection and a small reference library.