MRI: ACQUISITION OF A MULTICOLLECTOR-ICP-MASS SPECTROMETER FOR MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH AND TEACHING AT NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY

Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff AZ

Investigators

Abstract

NSF funds will be used to acquire a multicollector-inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (MC-ICPMS). The MC-ICPMS will promote understanding of environmental challenges for rural Arizona, including remediation of areas that have been polluted from mining, sourcing and transport/fate of anthropogenic pollutants, volcanic hazards, and evidence for - and ecosystem responses to - global change. It will improve STEM-related teaching and research training at a university that serves a large rural Arizona and Native American population, as well as a large Hispanic community. The diverse research capabilities enabled by the new MC-ICPMS will be integral to the new comprehensive, integrative, and distinctive Earth and Environmental Systems Ph.D. program. The MC-ICPMS will advance research and training in isotope chemistry that spans the Geology, Chemistry/Biochemistry, Anthropology, Biology, Environmental Sciences and Forestry programs. With this instrument, the assembled investigators and their students will obtain high precision isotopic data for geochemical and geochronological investigations across the mass spectrum. The new MC-ICPMS will play a vital role in advancing the research objectives of at least 15 professional scientists and their students, including advancing knowledge related to: (1) the assembly and eruption of magmas responsible for explosive, sometime giant, events; (2) anthropogenic pollution; (3) landscape and tectonic evolution; and (4) large earthquakes and periodic fluid migration from depth.