Underground labs and test sites constitute an important part of geoscientific infrastructure and can be considered as scientific instruments on their own. They exist in a wide variety of types, sizes, accessible depths as well as geological and tectonic settings. Common for all of them is that they allow to access the subsurface with specific instrumental set-ups including underground sensors, sondes, and sometimes even by hand. They allow for diverse tests ranging from short-term instrument tests to long-term experiments investigating the temporal behaviour of various tools and subsurface parameters. Unfortunately the extensive possibilities of such underground labs and test sites are commonly not well known within the scientific community. This session aims to raise the awareness level of underground labs and test sites to provide a forum helping to maintain and advance the underground lab community.
We invite contributions from operators and providers of underground labs and test sites to introduce their infrastructure as well as from users showing exemplary applications from the usage of such test sites. This may include also presentations addressing future requirements of new test sites or the modification of existing test sites to provide special environments for advanced downhole and underground geoscientific experiments.