9628749 Shimizu This grant provides $538,966 as partial support of costs of salaries, equipment and supplies associated with the continued operation of the North East Regional Ion Microprobe Facility (NERIMF) at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution over the next three years. Previous support of this facility was solely for the operation and maintenance of a Cameca ims 3f ion microprobe. Support for the development of operational techniques on their newly acquired,state-of-the-art, Cameca ims 1270 ion microprobe (EAR-9214641) is included in this awards for facility support. The two-machine operation will be under the direct supervision of Nobumichi Shimizu at Woods Hole but the ims 1270 was purchased through contributions from a partnership of institutions including, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), Brown University, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) so that early technique development on the ims 1270 will include PI's from these institutions as well as WHOI. This award represents a modest increase (ca 9%) over their current level of support for operation and maintenance of the ims 3f, yet development of techniques utilizing the ims 1270 will be the primary thrust of this group over the next three years. Specifically, outside user access to the ims 1270 will be restricted for the first 27 months to allow the partnership to pursue technique developments including, in situ measurement of U/Pb ratios in zircons for geochronologic investigations, measurement of isotopic ratios of elements in the U-series disequilibria in Mid-Ocean Ridge Basalts as indicators of the petrologic history of these magmas and high precision measurements of the Sr/Ca ratio recorded in corals at very high resolutions (sub-annual to possibly sub-weekly) as proxies of paleo sea surface temperatures in paleoclimatologic studies. A dditional work will focus on the development of standards for both U/Pb zircon geochronology and for trace elemental analyses. Analyses of trace element ratios in biogenic carbonates at micro-scale spatial resolution will allow unprecedented determination of records of global change. While the ims 1270,due to its high mass resolution and high transmission is uniquely suited to studies of U-series isotopic ratios as well as high spatial resolution elemental analyses of environmentally important trace elements (i.e. Cu, Zn, Pb) in biogenic carbonates, the ims 3f will continue to provide for the analytical determination of trace elemental abundances in geological samples where the high sensitivity of the ims 1270 is not critical. ***
