Physical Geography laboratory

The Physical Geography laboratory offers facilities and support to the department’s academic and teaching staff and students (undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD) working in the fields of Physical Geography and Geomorphology. It provides a working environment for 25 students. The areas of the Physical Geography Laboratory research include palaeogeographic reconstruction studies of coastal areas based on the sedimentological and micropalaeontological analysis of sediment samples for the definition of the depositional palaeoenvironments, fluvial sediment transport studies, geomorphological mapping etc.

The laboratory is supported by full sediment sample preparation facilities under subdued red light required for Optical Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating. It is equipped with sediment sampling equipments (coring equipment – cobra portable drilling machine for undisturbed soft sediments sampling), equipment to measure river flow velocity (speed meters), fluvial sediment traps designed to collect samples of bed load, suspended sediment sampler, soil and sediment drying oven, high precision scale, equipment for sediment particle size analysis as well as for hydrometric analysis of fine grained sediment samples (laser particle size analyzer and series of sieves with a mechanical sieve shaker), stereomicroscopes for micropalaeontological analysis of sediment samples, a petrographic microscope to identify rocks and minerals in thin sections, portable water-chemistry equipment that can be used in the field to look at aspects of water pollution.

The Physical Geography laboratory also operates a network of permanent and portable surface meteorological stations. The network is currently consisting of 4 permanent stations in Attiki and Peloponnesus. The accurate locations of the stations are depicted as green pins in the chart below. This network also includes a lightning detector installed in the University Campus on a meteorological mast at 11 meters height. It detects and tracks thunderstorms up to 500 km away in an updated rate of 30 minutes. The entire real-time records and weather predictions are available through the web site http://meteoclima.gr