Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory - Research Programs

Research Programs

Research at SAFL includes the work of many fields, including civil engineering, hydraulic engineering, hydrology, ecology, and geology. Research at SAFL has been spurred on in the first decade of the 21st century by its status as the headquarters of the National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics (NCED). Facilities at SAFL include the main channel, through which Mississippi River water can be sent for large-scale sediment transport experiments; the delta basins, designed to quickly build experimental stratigraphy; the eXperimental EarthScape facility (XES, nicknamed "Jurassic Tank"), a subsiding basin for large-scale depositional modeling; the Outdoor Stream Lab, which is used to understand fluvial processes and riparian ecology at closer to a field scale; and many other pieces of equipment. The lab is known for rapidly constructing and destructing experimental apparatuses, including full scale models of rivers to understand the effects of dam removal.

Analog material models of fluvial and depositional systems are employed by geologists at SAFL to understand the causes of river channel morphologies and dynamics, as well as to reconstruct the history of events that produces particular stratigraphic packages. Researchers working on channel morphology have shown the importance of vegetation in restricting braided channels to a single thread (and often sinuous) system. Research done on experimental alluvial fan deltas has highlighted the statistics of flow occupation and their potential hazard to life and property, shown autogenic cyclicity in patterns of sediment storage and release that determine short-term shoreline positions, and has been connected to sequence stratigraphy and the processes that form the stratigraphic record.