The microfossil separation lab was set up and is operated by Reed Scherer to support his research involving diatoms and the ice sheets of Antarctica.
The research carried out in the microfossil separation lab and the associated ESEM relate directly to the very important question of climate stability, colloquially referred to as "global warming." Are the ice sheets stable over time, or have they broken up before? If they have broken up in the past, what was the extent of the breakup, the time scale of it, and what were the causes? Evidence currently suggests, for instance, that there was at least one major disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet within the last 500,000 years, long before man would have had a significant impact on the global ecosystem.