Lab

We are setting up a new Landscape Evolution Laboratory in a renovated space at the Environmental Sciences Shop Building at the University of Virginia. The centerpiece of the lab is a large basin — 7 meters long, 3 meters wide, and 1.5 meters deep — where we will evolve landscapes in miniature. In this setting we can precisely set fluxes of water and sediment , thereby studying controls on landscape evolution that are often difficult to isolate in nature. Design began in 2018, and in late 2023 we finished establishing a fully automated suite of basin controls, including an instrument cart for high-precision topography measurements. The lab is a short stroll through the woods from the heart of the UVA Grounds and is down the road from McCormick Observatory,  which at the time of its construction in the 1880s was the largest telescope in the US.

Loading in the basin in the building in May 2021

The basin includes an observation deck for a bird’s-eye view of modeled landscapes

Testing the water system in summer 2023