This grant provides partial support for the costs of acquiring a High-Pressure Liquid Chromatograph (HPLC) for the Amino Acid Laboratory at the Center for Geochronologic Research, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado. The PI's have a long history of field and analytical programs that incorporate racemization as a tool to address issues in Quaternary paleoclimatology. The new HPLC will take advantage of recent engineering and methodological advances in reverse phase HPLC, and will allow routine separation of most amino acid stereoisomers from geological materials with nearly two orders of magnitude less sample than previously required. In particular, reverse phase HPLC offers the advantage of measuring D/L ratios for fast-racemizing aspartic acid, providing greater age and paleotemperature resolution for environmental change at high latitudes. Improved data processing and data handling will allow more efficient utilization of measurements. Ongoing NSF-sponsored in-house and collaborative research programs are targeted toward quantifying climate change in the Canadian Arctic, Russian Arctic, Norwegian Arctic, as well as in Australia and Antarctica. Support for this grant is shared between the Earth Sciences Instrumentation and Facilities Program (EAR/IF) and the Division of Atmospheric Sciences' Paleoclimate Program (ATM/PC). ***
