Making the invisible visible: StFX's new methane research facility takes shape in rural Nova Scotia

StFX’s new methane research facility is situated on a flat area near Oxford, NS, where little is visible. Most of the equipment that makes the site remarkable sits out of sight, buried or enclosed. And that is the point: this is one of the more unusual research facilities in the country, a place built to release methane on purpose, so scientists can learn to find it, says Dr. Nadia Tarakki, Acting Research Coordinator at StFX’s FluxLab. The facility is called SIMFLEX-BASE, short for Simulation Facility for Large-Scale Emission Experiments. Developed and led by FluxLab, the StFX research group headed by Dr. Dave Risk, it is designed to solve a deceptively hard problem. Methane is invisible, odourless in the quantities that matter, and notoriously difficult to measure accurately once it drifts from its source, Dr. Tarakki says.  “That difficulty has real consequences as methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and landfills are among its largest sources. Regulators and industry increasingly rely on satellites, aircraft, drones and ground sensors to detect leaks, but those tools are only as good as our ability to test them. That is where SIMFLEX-BASE comes in.”