This MRI proposal requests funding for two tandem mass spectrometers with a research focus on water quality and its biogeochemical and anthropogenic controls. Emphasis is placed on emerging contaminants and their carriers, since these constituents are impacting to an increasing degree all aspects of the hydrologic cycle and they pose some of the most complex and broadly relevant challenges for water science and engineering. Faculty in four colleges at University of Arizona (UA), along with collaborators at Arizona State University (ASU) and Northern Arizona University (NAU), are establishing a new multi-user facility dedicated to state-of-the-art water analyses that will provide a keystone for current and future programmatic needs in this cross-cutting area of environmental science, engineering and toxicology. The MRI will be included in this new facility, and will be used by more than 18 engineering and science faculty collaborators with research and teaching programs focusing on groundwater, surface water, drinking water and wastewater. All share the common goal to characterize and quantify dissolved and suspended species in aqueous systems. The MRI request is for (i) liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) and (ii) gas chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS).
