This award will provide funding for the continued operation of the NSF-Arizona Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) Facility. This facility utilizes two AMS instruments which are dedicated to the study of cosmogenic isotopes and has operated at the University of Arizona since 1981. The laboratory focuses most of its effort on radiocarbon (14C) measurements, with other studies on 10Be and 129I. The NSF-Arizona AMS Facility enables scientists to date prehistoric materials to ~50 kyr before present and to use radiocarbon as a chemical tracer to investigate the pathways carbon follows in nature. Understanding these pathways illuminates a diversity of earth processes in the oceans, on land, and in the atmosphere. NSF-Arizona AMS Facility measurements allows researchers to study these processes over time, and use the past as a benchmark for studying the present. For the last two consecutive years the facility has produced over 6,000 radiocarbon measurements annually.
The time and resources of the NSF-Arizona AMS Facility are evenly divided between service and research. These two activities are complementary and both contribute to the intellectual merit and broader impacts of the proposal. Research within the Facility expands its capabilities for service to the greater scientific community, and conversely the service work can benefit new research initiatives. The in-house research program emphasizes the development of sample processing techniques for a variety of sample types. Proposed research activities for the coming years include studies in archaeology, meteoritics, radiocarbon calibration, forest fires, in situ 14C and 10Be, paleoclimate, oceanography and hydrology, as well as studies using 129I and 26Al. The broader impacts of the proposal are manifest in the number and diversity of scientists who use the facility, and by the number of students who receive training here. Many of these students received hands-on training and the bulk of student analyses were provided at no cost.
