Spectroscopic Instrumentation for San Diego State University Ecology Programs

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This award provides support for the acquisition of three analytical instruments: an autoanalyzer for nutrient analysis, a stable isotope mass analyzer for tracing the movement of nitrogen and carbon in organisms and the environment, and an inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometer (ICP-OES) for measuring alkali and heavy metals, which will be shared by faculty and students studying a variety of research problems related to the environment. In addition to researchers from several units within San Diego State University, researchers and students at several other US, Mexican and Canadian institutions (University of San Diego, University of California at Davis, University of British Columbia, and El Centro de Investigaciones Biologicas del Noroeste (La Paz) will have use of the instruments. The instruments will be used for a number of ongoing projects in diverse areas of environmental research. These include global change, freshwater and marine ecosystems, plant-insect and plant-microbe interactions, and biogeochemistry. The instrumentation will be placed in a core analytical facility that supports research funded by NSF and a number of other federal agencies, and will be used in concert with modeling, remote sensing and GIS capabilities at SDSU. The research is expected to improve understanding of the patterns and controls on ecosystem structure and function and the interaction of ocean, atmospheric, land on ecosystem metabolism. In addition to its role in research, the facility supports a number of education and training programs, including an NSF sponsored program that places science graduate students in K-6 classrooms, and an NSF sponsored project intended to train undergraduate students in use of state-of-the-art instrumentation and approaches in the environmental sciences.