The Department boasts state of the art research facilities, particularly for physical geography. The most recent addition to the Department is the Environmental Diagnostics Laboratories funded through HEFCE’s Science Research Infrastructure Fund (SRIF).

The Labs are designed specifically to cater for analyses that unravel recent climate- and human-driven environmental change with a view to predicting what the future holds in store.  They allow the Department’s researchers to understand current problems of water pollution and increasing drought so that we can help find ways of developing and sustaining water resources. 

They also provide an experimental platform for the Department’s expertise in environmental granulometry – extending from river sedimentation to desert dust hazards – to continue to flourish.

The Department maintains several meteorological and hydrological field stations in the UK and abroad, some serving undergraduate field classes and individual projects.

The Departments map room holds a complete series of 1:50,000 and 1:25,000 OS maps covering the UK, this is in addition to an archive of paper maps covering most areas of the world at small scale. The map room, recently relocated and refurbished has several workstations and a large format A0 scanner for specialist mapping work.

This is complemented by the Universities subscription to Digimap and UK Borders where registered staff and students have online access to digital versions of OS topographic, geological, historical and bathymetric map data for use in a variety of GIS/CAD and standard office applications. Students have exclusive access to a computer laboratory for computer-assisted learning along with access to other web-based material.

For departmental staff, click here for more information (restricted to departmental staff).