Developing Rare Earth Elements as a Paleoceanographic Proxy for bottom Water Oxygen, Water Mass, and Carbon Cycling: Separating Primary and Diagenetic Influences

稀土元素 (REE) 的分布取决于环境的氧化还原行为。因此，通过研究深海沉积物中有孔虫的稀土元素含量，可以阐明过去的海洋学条件。然而，这已被证明是一项困难的分析任务，因为这组元素容易受到污染，并且很难清洁有孔壳以确保无伪影的解释。这项工作将利用新开发的流通浸出技术，有望解决这一困难的分析问题。 该技术将利用与电感耦合等离子体质谱仪 (ICPMS) 连接的自动离子色谱法。

The distribution of Rare Earth Elements (REEs) depends on the redox behavior of the environment. Therefore, past oceanographic conditions might be elucidated by studying the REE content of foraminifera in deep sea sediments. This has proven to be a difficult analytical task however because this set of elements is prone to contamination, and it is difficult to clean the foram shells to assure artifact-free interpretation. This work will utilize a newly developed flow-through leaching technique which hopefully will solve this difficult analytical problem. The technique will utilize automated ion chromatography interfaced to an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICPMS).