Facilities

Colorado Plateau Analytical Laboratory (CPAL) serves undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty at NAU who require analytical analyses and stable isotope analyses for their research.  Additionally, scientists from other institutions send samples for isotope analyses on a pay-per-sample basis.  CPAL analyzes approximately 25,000 samples per year. CPAL operates five isotope ratio mass spectrometers and various on- and off-line preparation units. Other equipment in the laboratory includes items required for sample preparation, such as tissue grinders and mills, block digesters, a dedicated room for hoods, a clean room, and computers and printers.

The Geospatial Research and Information Laboratory (GRAIL) has a complete suite of hardware and software resources for support research and education activities. All servers are housed in an air conditioned, fire protected server room with conditioned, redundant power. The GRAIL shares a 16-seat computer teaching laboratory (BIO413) with the Department of Biological Sciences at Northern Arizona University.  The laboratories have Windows 7 64-bit workstations loaded with the most common GIS and Statistics packages.

The NAU Genetics Core Facility is a multi-user research laboratory designed for diverse biological applications. This high-throughput laboratory is a regional resource center that supports molecular genetic and genomic analyses and training across a wide user base including regional academic, government and private institutions. Users of this facility are studying plant evolution, ecological community genetics, conservation genetics, microbial diversity, molecular epidemiology and human biomedical genetics and genomics.

With assistance from a generous philanthropic gift to the NAU Foundation, Northern Arizona University acquired the historic Hat Ranch near Williams in April 2021. Located 70 miles south of the Grand Canyon, the ranch will provide research, teaching, and outreach opportunities for faculty, students, and partners. The Hat Ranch was established in the early 1800s and includes roughly 300 scenic acres and a variety of well-preserved period buildings. It is partially surrounded by more than 1,500 acres in conservation easement held by the Grand Canyon Trust.

The Imaging and Histology Core Facility (IHCF) is a multi-user service center located within the College of Engineering, Forestry, and Natural Sciences at NAU. The facility has been serving the Flagstaff community for over 40 years and houses multiple high-powered microscopes, ancillary equipment and histological equipment to meet the diverse research needs of University faculty, students and industry partners. The IHCF is equipped with a Zeiss Supra 40VP field emission scanning electron microscope (SEM), JEOL 1200EX-II transmission-electron microscope (TEM), and a Leica confocal microscope as well as office space for staff and specimen preparation areas.

Monsoon is a capacity-type, Linux-based computer cluster with 856 Intel Xeon cores, 12TB of memory, and 4 Nvidia Tesla K80 gpu cores. It has been designed to be flexible and handle a diverse set of research requirements. 31 individual systems are interconnected via FDR Infiniband at a rate of 56Gbps and <.07us latency. Cluster nodes have access to 750TB of shared storage via FDR Infiniband. Monsoon has an estimated peak performance of 20 teraflops.

The Merriam-Powell Research Station (MPRS) station represents a strong collaboration between NAU and The Arboretum to promote excellence in field-based environmental research, curricula, and disseminate research results on the Colorado Plateau through informal education venues. The station facility is located at The Arboretum at Flagstaff, adjacent to the Centennial Forest.  The station will easily accommodate 20-30 researchers and students involved in field research and courses in Northern Arizona. This facility is ideal for visiting researchers to our region, building collaborative research efforts, and increasing collaboration among Arboretum and NAU faculty and staff. It is also available for meetings and workshops with upgraded wireless capacity.

NAU’s Research Greenhouse is used for research and teaching in ecology, forestry, and other botanical sciences. The facility has 13,000 square feet of head house and lab space and eight 1,000-square-foot greenhouses. Because of Flagstaff’s 7,000-foot elevation, climate zones as diverse as the alpine and Sonoran high desert zones can be established in one location, making this an unusual and important facility. Over the past decade, the mission of the greenhouse has expanded to include: growing plants for habitat restoration, developing a campus arboretum, and establishing partnerships with local, state, and federal agencies involving plant production for restoration.

The Southwest Experimental Garden Array (SEGA) is CAWL genetics-based climate change research platform that allows scientists to quantify the ecological and evolutionary responses of species exposed to changing climate conditions. SEGA has a system of 10 gardens along a steep elevation gradient in northern Arizona that includes conditions ranging from desert to alpine forest. By planting the same plant species and genotypes in different environments, scientists can identify which ones perform best and are most likely to survive changing conditions.

Restoration Gardens: In addition to SEGA gardens we currently have 18 gardens distributed throughout the interior west that are funded independently from SEGA, although most of them are structured similarly in that plants of known genetic stocks are used in the restoration gardens. These gardens are available for use by NAU researchers and collaborators from other universities.

The Teaching Greenhouse provides living plant material for a number of lab courses in NAU’s Department of Biological Sciences. They give tours to K-12 classes, and have excellent collections of succulents and orchids!

Founded in 1998, The Walnut Creek Center for Education and Research (WCCER) is a partnership between Prescott College, Northern Arizona University, The Arboretum at Flagstaff, and Prescott National Forest. WCCER occupies the Forest Service’s decommissioned Walnut Creek Station and administrative site. A diversity of researchers, students, and public visitors utilize the 275-acre site of Arizona uplands and riparian gallery forest each year. Because of the diversity of available resources, habitats and moisture, the field station promotes a diversity of seasonal, resident and visiting wildlife species. Structures at WCCER include a 1200 sq. ft. manager’s residence, a 2000 sq. ft. multipurpose building, a generator building and four other significant outbuildings.