9724190 Bierman This grant, made through the Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) Program, provides $106,166 as partial support of the costs of acquiring equipment to be used in integrated studies of surficial and environmental geology at the University of Vermont. Specifically, the equipment to be purchased will include a real-time kinematic global positioning system receiver and hand-held GPS field unit, a carbon/nitrogen analyzer and a whole core magnetic susceptibility system. This equipment will benefit the analytical needs of these young researchers and their students for a variety of interesting and environmentally significant studies including, landscape evolution research that relies on AMS dating of exposed surfaces using cosmogenic nuclides, studies of tectonic and post-glacial isostatic tilting in New England fluvial terraces, documenting historical lake level changes and coastal wetland transgression in response to rising sea level, investigating the carbon dynamics of coastal wetlands, and assessing nitrogen transformations in forested ecosystems and through aquatic food webs. The GPS equipment will help to carefully document the geographic location of samples for subsequent exposure age dating and will provide accurate delineation of changes in lake and wetland shorelines through time. The C/N analyzer is necessary for characterization of lake and marsh sediments and will complement the stable isotopic investigations of co-PI Andrea Lini in studies of nutrient dynamics in coastal, lacustrine and forest ecosystems. Finally, the magnetic susceptibility system will be invaluable for stratigraphic control in the tectonic, isostatic and geomorphologic studies of Bierman as it will aid in the correlation of individual strata. ***
