An Isotope-Ratio Mass Spectrometer for Ecology and Environmental Biology at
Northern Arizona University
National Science Foundation
Collaborators: George Koch, Steve Hart, Dean Blinn, Tom Whitham
Project Summary. This proposal requests funds to purchase an isotope-ratio mass spectrometer for research in the fields of Ecology and Environmental Biology at Northern Arizona University (NAU). This instrument will be used by 15 faculty members in 5 different departments at NAU to address questions such as tracing energy flow through food webs, determining the fate of environmental contaminants (e.g., runoff of fertilizaer from agriculture into aquatic ecosystems), measuring the efficiency with which plants use water, identifying the sources of water to riparian vegetation, and measuring turnover of nitrogen and carbon in terrestrial ecosystems, particularly changes in these processes in response to environmental perturbation. Use would also include applications in Archaeology, determining, for example, when human societies have relied on certain plant species such as corn, which has a distinctive carbon isotope "signature" that is reflected in the bones of consumers. Stable isotope techniques allow the investigation of these questions quantitatively and non-intrusively (without the environmental hazards of radioisotopes), and thus offer considerable advantages over other techniques. Indeed, many of these ecological and environmental questions can only be addressed by using stable isotopes. Use of these techniques at NAU is severely hampered by not having ready access to a mass spectrometer facility. The funds requested in this proposal would relieve this constraint, and thus greatly enhance research in Ecology and Environmental Biology at NAU.