This new facility located just south of Minneapolis brought SAFL more into the world of renewable energy research with the addition of a wind turbine among other things.

Funding for SAFL's expansions has come throughout the years from a number of outside sources like NASA, NSF, U.S. Navy, Department of Energy, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Hamburg Ship Model Basin, the Legislative-Citizen Commission for Minnesota Resources, and many more.

[5][6] Research done on experimental alluvial fan deltas has highlighted the statistics of flow occupation and their potential hazard to life and property,[7] shown autogenic cyclicity in patterns of sediment storage and release that determine short-term shoreline positions,[8] and has been connected to sequence stratigraphy and the processes that form the stratigraphic record.

At present, SAFL's Earth surface research revolves around the following interlinked themes: SAFL's long-term research vision is to "develop an interconnected system of theoretical and computational models, supported by data streams from the living surface environment, that can provide testable, adaptive predictions for scenarios ranging from environmental restoration and natural hazard mitigation to changes in precipitation to global sea-level rise.

"[14] SAFL has active research programs in a number of areas to assess and quantify global change impacts and to develop science-based solutions for mitigating their consequences such as an altered atmosphere and a degradation of water resources.

The implementation of these technologies should be supported by mechanistic models, which are driven by real-time data, and should be integrated with policy, economics, human health sciences, and ecology.

SAFL can provide national leadership on all of these fronts, working with a mindset to actively engage industry, government and state agencies, and other renewable energy stakeholders.

The Lab has 15 general purpose flumes, tanks, and channels that are readily configurable to the needs of a project and can indefinitely pump in water from the Mississippi at up to 300 ft³/s.

Facilities at SAFL include the main channel, through which Mississippi River water can be sent for large-scale sediment transport experiments; the delta basins, designed to quickly build experimental stratigraphy; the eXperimental EarthScape facility (XES, nicknamed "Jurassic Tank"), a subsiding basin for large-scale depositional modeling; the Outdoor Stream Lab, which is used to understand fluvial processes and riparian ecology at closer to a field scale; and many other pieces of equipment.

The lab is known for rapidly constructing and destructing experimental apparatuses, including full-scale models of rivers to understand the effects of dam removal.

The StreamLab has a recirculating water outflow of up to a 200 L³/s Designed for modeling of the air/land boundary layer, the wind tunnel can provide a circulating or once-through flow of air that can reach up to 148 ft/s.

It is equipped with a glass observation wall, temperature and surface variation capabilities, a rotating turntable, smoke generator, and laser instrumentation.

During the academic year, SAFL hosts weekly seminars on various topics related to environmental, geophysical and biological fluid mechanics and engineering featuring presenters from academia, government agencies and industry.

The REU program is a collaboration among the University of Minnesota, the Fond du Lac Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa, and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes in Montana to study various research topics that can help problems in the community.