This project provides support for the acquisition of oceanographic instrumentation that is to be placed in a pool of shared use equipment and made available to investigators at the University of Southern California. A modern benchtop automated mass spectro- meter will be acquired to replace a 20-year old model that is no longer practical to maintain and operate. The concentrations of nutrients and other chemical constituents of seawater are key elements in numerous biological and chemical oceanographic studies. The precise and rapid analysis of various nutrients is a complex procedure, but recent advances in analytical instrumenta- tion have enabled scientists to make many chemical determinations at sea and with increasingly smaller sample sizes. The new auto- analyzer will be operated as a laboratory and seagoing facility. Several ongoing and planned research projects including Global Ocean Flux Study will benefit from the increased sensitivity and sample throughput provided by the new instrument.
