Facilities and Equipment

Department Equipment

Many advances in modern soil research rely on equipment ranging in complexity from test-tubes to computer-based laboratory instruments, or from traditional farm machinery to satellite imagery. In addition to routine laboratory items such as pH meters, centrifuges and microscopes, other instruments available for use are sensors of soil-water relationships, such as neutron probes, pressure chambers and transducers, and water potential hygrometers. Greenhouses and growth chambers, plus rooms with controlled environments, are available for studies of soil-plant interactions.

The department is well-equipped with instrumentation for analysis of soil, mineral, biological, and water samples. Equipment for analysis of inorganic ions in solution includes several atomic absorption and flame emission spectrophotometers, ion chromatographs, an inductively coupled plasma (ICP) emission spectrophotometer, and an ICP-mass spectrometer. X-ray fluorescence is used to probe the structure of soil minerals. High resolution Ge(Li) detectors and a computer-based multichannel analyzer are used for gamma-ray spectroscopy in connection with neutron activation analysis for trace elements and tracer studies. Tritium, carbon, and phosphorus tracers are radioassayed by liquid scintillation systems, heavy N with a GC-MS setup, and gas chromatographs with radioactivity detectors. Gas chromatography and high-pressure liquid chromatography help in determining the concentrations of ionic and organic components of soils, including residues of anthropogenic additions or chemical spills.

Soils morphology laboratories are equipped with thin-sectioning apparatus and phase-contrast, polarizing and epifluorescence light microscopy systems; the CALS high-voltage electron microscope is located nearby. Soils graduate students and faculty have shared access to major advanced physicochemical, x-ray, electron microscopy and analytical equipment through the Materials Science Center, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Facility at Madison (NMRFAM), Synchrotron Radiation Center and other UW-Madison and CALS science and engineering departments. Specialized laboratories and facilities are available for modern environmental microbiology and biotechnology.

Latest equipment acquisitions include a Hewlett-Packard 6890 gas-chromatograph/mass-spectrometer, a Dynatech Laboratories UV-visible absorbance MRX microtiter-plate reader, a Dynatech Laboratories fluorescent microtiter plate reader, a Varian 360L NMR spectrophotometer and a Leco CNS analyzer.

Support Facilities

CALS and UW-Madison operate many facilities which support graduate studies. CALS operates 13 strategically-located Agricultural Research Stations, each representing unique soil types, climate, and farming enterprises of Wisconsin. Four are located within a short distance of campus: Arlington, West Madison, the Dairy Forage Field Facility, which is operated in cooperation with the USDA's Dairy Forage Research Center, and the O.J. Noer Turfgrass Research and Education Facility. Other popular research stations are those at Lancaster, in the Driftless Region of Southwestern Wisconsin, and Hancock, in the Central Sands Region, an area of irrigated agriculture.

Each station has its own specialty equipment and is staffed with personnel ready to assist in field activities. Other land is also used for research projects on soil and water-quality problems in cooperation with state agencies, commercial forestry and agricultural enterprises, municipalities and individual farmers. Field projects are aided by daily information from the CALS Agricultural Weather-Station Network and soils, crops, land-use and natural resources analysis using geographic information systems (GIS).

The Department operates two diagnostic laboratories: the Soil and Plant Analysis Laboratory (SPAL) in Madison and the Soil and Forage Analysis Laboratory in Marshfield. Each provides a wide range of analytical services to the state by conducting analysis of soil, plant, forage, feeds, water, and wastes. In addition to serving the agricultural community, landowners, homeowners, and industry and consulting firms, the laboratories currently serve over 200 UW-System scientists on a regular basis by providing services at reduced rates for research samples. Both routine and specialized tests are available to researchers, and all work is quality-assured.

Both laboratories use state-of-the-art instrumentation, including an inductively-coupled plasma emission spectrometer (ICP) at SPAL for the simultaneous determination of 25 elements and near-infrared spectrometers for the analysis of forage quality parameters. Statewide testing data from our own and all commercial testing laboratories assembled by soil type are summarized at SPAL and periodically evaluated in making soil fertility management recommendations to growers.

An array of computer facilities and assistance can be found throughout the campus. Excellent data collection, datalogging, computing and networking facilities are available inhouse or via dedicated hookup lines to mainframe facilities. CALS operates its own Computer and Statistical Consulting Center for faculty and students, offering many services-including consulting-free-of-charge. This consulting service, from experimental design to data collection and analysis, has immensely aided graduate student research at UW-Madison.

In addition to computing facilities maintained by individual researchers for their students, the department makes available to its graduate students a Departmental Computer Graphics Facility for the production of sophisticated graphic output in hardcopy and slides.