ERIE Research Facilities

Field Sites:

Elton Creek: ERIE trainees have access to a stream restoration site in Freedom, New York, about an hour and a half drive south of UB.  This site is home to an active gravel mining facility, and the creek flowing through the site, Elton Creek, is already slated for stream restoration projects.  The owner and operator of this site is Lafarge North America, and they are actively supportive of ERIE involvement, providing full access to the site, previous data collected at the site, and support for data collection.

West Seneca Oxbow: The West Seneca oxbow field site will be used by the 2009 ERIE Ecosystem Restoration Practicum course. The 28-acre oxbow wetland is being investigated for habitat and hydrologic restoration. ERIE trainees will be developing a watershed plan for the site (Click here for more information on the project).

Labs:

Environmental Fluid Mechanics (EFML) Laboratory: The EFML contains a 20-m long, 0.7 m wide recirculating, tilting flume and can be used for testing applications under two-dimensional flow conditions.  There are multiple controls for flow in the flume, including pump motor speed, valve opening, and head and tail gates.  Flowrate is measured with an orifice meter.  The flume sides are plexiglass to facilitate viewing, installation and instrumentation of different test conditions. 

Geomorphology Laboratory using the Rainfall Erosion Facility (REF): The REF has three components: (1) a large soil box (flume) with adjustable slope and base level; (2) a rainfall simulator capable of delivering rates of 30 to 150 mm hr-1 at or near terminal velocity; and (3) state-of-the-art digital imaging hardware for producing very high resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) of the evolving bed surface.  For more information on the REF, click here.

Figure A.  REF, Geomorphology Laboratory at the University at Buffalo (photo courtesy of Dr. Sean Bennett, University at Buffalo).

Department of Chemisty Facilities: The Department of Chemistry within ERIE has their own research facilties, for more information see the Department of Chemistry's Facilities Webpage.

Addition Laboratory Capability:
In addition to the flumes, laboratories at UB are equipped with the instrumentation needed to analyze field measurements, including Shimadzu TOC-V and TNM-1 analyzers with autosampler for aqueous total organic carbon (TOC) and nitrogen analysis.

Field Equipment:

Distributed Temperature Sensor System: The programs has access to an innovative piece of field equipment, a distributed temperature sensor (DTS) that was acquired as part of an NSF equipment grant.  For more information on the program's DTS equipment, click here.

In-situ Jet Erosion Device: The ERIE program owns a in-situ jet testing device, which was developed by the USDA. The device’s major components are a head tank for maintaining constant pressure, jet tube, nozzle, point gage and jet submergence tank (Hanson and Hunt 2007).  Its primary purpose is to determine the erodibility coefficient and shear stress parameters necessary for sediment transport calculations (Hanson and Cook 1997) in cohesive sediments.

Water Quality: For measuring water quality parameters (e.g., specific conductivity, dissolved oxygen, pH, temperature, turbidity)the ERIE program owns the following equipment: two YSI 6920 V2 Sondes with pressure transducer; optical DO, turbidity, pH and nitrate sensors and 25ft cable, with data-logging capabilities and a Highland 650 multiparameter display; two YSI Professional Plus rapid pulse water quality meters w/ dissolved oxygen/pH/conductivity probes; and sixty HOBO tidbits (submersible temperature loggers) and basestation..  A solar-powered weather station (NexSens WS-100 standalone weather station) is also available to obtain wind speed and direction, precipitation, barometric pressure, temperature, and relative humidity data.

Flow and Velocity Meters: To measure stream flow, velocity, and water depth ERIE trainees have 2 Sontek Argonaut-SWs and a FlowTracker Handheld ADV at their disposal. These pieces of equipment rely on acoustic Doppler technology.