This award provides support for the purchase of an automated ion analyzer with flow injection analysis capability. The instrument will expand the analytical capabilities of the Laboratory for Environmental Chemistry (LEC) at New Mexico State University, where it will be available for use by faculty and students from a number of colleges and universities in New Mexico. The LEC is a multi-user, multi-institution facility that facilitates environmental research and plays an important part in the research training of graduate and undergraduate students in environmental chemistry. Among other expected uses, the analyzer will be used to examine biogeochemical transfers in the Chihuahuan Desert ecosystem, including studies conducted at the Jornada Long Term Ecological Research site, and to examine the interactions of plants and endophytic fungi. Such fungi are thought to play key roles in ecosystem functions, in plant nutritional and community ecology, and in mediating plant-herbivore interactions.
