Research Infrastructure & Facilities

The Coastal Research Center offers equipment, data, and expertise to support coastal research. Questions about accessing any of the following resources should be directed to station staff.

  • Fleet of shallow water research vessels (Carolina Skiffs, 21' -24') with skilled captains 
  • Deep-water dock with 10 slips. The floating dock portion accommodates 3 boats, with additional dedicated space for sample processing and instrument deployment  
  • Mesocosm array with unfiltered flow-through seawater (on dock without cover – optional shade) [add dimensions]. Available seasonally outside of freeze risk. 
  • Field trucks (UVA use only; may be used by others accompanied by station staff) 
  • Hand tools (shovels, rakes, mallets, etc) 
  • Ice maker 
  • Coolers, buckets 
  • Plankton net and seine net (designated for general use) 
  • Aquaria: Tanks, Bubblers 
  • Communal use field safety gear :
    • Life jackets 
    • Dive boots 
    • Hip waders  
    • Wetsuits  
    • Snorkels 
    • Weight belts 
    • Gloves 
  • Deionized water (spigots in shared labs) 
  • Dissecting Scopes (6)  
  • Chest and upright freezers 
  • Refrigerators 
  • Vacuum filtration array (6 samples, with pump) 
  • Chemical storage lockers 
  • Fume hoods (2)
  • Drying Ovens (8) and Muffle furnace (2)  
  • High-Precision Balances, all of which receive professional calibration annually: 
    • Ohaus Adventure 
    • Mettler Toledo XS104 
    • Mettler Toledo College 
    • Sartorius LA64001S
  • Hitachi 200 UV-visible spectrophotometer 
  • Other lab supplies 
    • Glassware (beakers & flasks, graduated cylinders, petri dishes, BOD bottles) 
    • Weighboats and tins 
    • Dissecting kits 
    • Mortar and pestles 
    • Field sieves (for sediment, plankton, etc) 
    • pH meters, salinometers, oxygen meters, incubators 
  • A searchable archive of data collected near the CRC is available through the Organization of Biological Field Stations
  • Hourly meteorological data from Hog Island, Oyster Harbor, and Brownsville (Phillips creek)
  • Tide stations at Hog Island, at the CRC, and in Red Bank  (published on NOAA tide-prediction web pages)
  • Marsh Flux Tower, which hosts an Eddy Covariance System that measures the land-air exchange of CO2, heat, and water. The tower also hosts proximal remote sensing measurements of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence and surface reflectance in the visible and near-infrared wavelengths.  
  • Trimble  
    • The CRC facility is mounted with a Emlid Reach RS2 real-time kinematic (RTK) GNSS base station, and an Emlid receiver 
    • Trimble R10 Model 2 RTK GNSS Global Positioning System (GPS) 
    • Lasermark Rotary laser, and Pentax SC-5  
    • Laser Total Survey Station are provided on site. 
  • Drone-based data collection 
    • DJI Phantom4 (capable of 4K/60fps video and 20MP photo) 
    • DJI Phantom4 RTK (capable of collecting imagery with centimeter positioning data that can be used to create horizontally and vertically accurate 2d and 3d orthomosaics and photogrammetric models) 
    • DJI phantom 4 Multispectral RTK (capable of collecting images across a large area using a multispectral camera array) 
  • Primary data processing is conducted on site. Remote computer access is available for all post-survey processing.  
  • UVA has site licenses for ArcGIS, Matlab, and many other analytical software packages. 

Station Acknowledgement

For publications resulting from research conducted at the Coastal Research Center, please include the following text in manuscript acknowledgements: “Facilities and research support were provided by University of Virginia's Anheuser-Busch Coastal Research Center (Oyster, VA).”

Thank you for acknowledging the role of the CRC in your work.