Infrastructure and equipment
Analytical services
ISFORT is equipped to prepare different types of samples collected in the field (e.g. biological material, soils) as well as perform numerous physical and chemical analyses on the samples.
Chemistry of natural products
ISFORT is in the process of acquiring equipment for the extraction, concentration and characterization of secondary metabolites present in the environment or in different types of biological material.
- Lyophilizer : Quickly eliminates water present in any type of sample
- uHPLC with photodiode (DAD) and charged aerosol (CAD) UV-Vis detectors : Analyzes complex mixtures and identifies their constituents
- Rotary Evaporator: Quickly removes organic solvents
- Large chemical hood : Safely manipulate harmful chemicals
Dendrochronology
ISFORT has the necessary equipment to carry out all the steps of a dendrochronological study, that is to say, the study of tree rings. Tree growth rings can provide us with a great deal of information about forest ecosystems. For example, we can know the age of trees, the presence of natural disturbances (epidemic, forest fires, drought), the effectiveness of a silvicultural treatment as well as the impact of different climatic variables on the growth of trees.
Ecophysiology
ISFORT has specialized equipment to measure different environmental variables, gas exchange and leaf chlorophyll.
Laboratory of Molecular Ecology
ISFORT’s Molecular Ecology Laboratory provides DNA extraction and purification, PCR amplification, electrophoresis migration on agarose gel, and DNA revelation using UV radiation as well as evaluates DNA purity by measuring absorbance. All these manipulations are in preparation for sequencing the DNA present in samples of plants, animals or the environment. Sequencing is not done at ISFORT because of the high cost of the equipment needed, but samples are instead sent to a company specialized in this field.
Modeling
Workstations make it possible to create models of a high complexity. Simulation models of forest treatments are often used and applied at the landscape scale or even at the national scale (e.g. Landis II, Seles, Patchworks). It is also possible to run analyses and models using geographic information systems. Finally, several models have been developed in the R statistical environment (e.g. stochastic and Bayesian models).
Plant nursery and growth room
ISFORT has a variety of spaces in which the environment can be controlled to perform a variety of experiments.
Remote sensing
ISFORT is equipped to acquire and process remote sensing data as well as to model several types of silvicultural scenarios or natural disturbances over large space-time scales. Workstations with very powerful computing capabilities are used to process data collected with state-of-the-art sensors.
