MRI: Acquisition of LA-HR-ICPMS instrumentation for climate, environmental, ecosystem, and engineering research at the University of Maine

该奖项是为了奖励采购新仪器，以支持采购新的LA-HR-ICPMS仪器，用于各种环境样品的痕量元素分析。该仪器将取代最初安装在缅因州大学气候变化研究所(CCI)的热科学元素2电感耦合等离子体质谱仪(CCI)。新的收购将大大扩展CCI/ICPMS设施的研究能力，以改善对水样的分析，并补充用于冰、生物和其他固体材料的激光消融(LA)前端。目前的电感耦合等离子体质谱设施成立于2002年，获得了NSF/MRI奖，自那以来一直是缅因州及其他地区的缅因州大学气候、环境、生态系统和工程研究与培训的重要资源。该设施的日常使用和主要支持来自首席研究人员和他们的合作者，他们分为三个研究领域：冰化学和气候/环境重建；古海洋学和海洋生物地球化学；环境传感器开发和材料科学工程。缅因州大学是州立陆地和海洋赠款大学，也是唯一的博士授予机构，因此该校园实际上是缅因州的学术研究和研究培训中心。这项研究和培训工具的拟议进展将立即影响目前和未来由NSF资助的支持广泛的国家和国际合作的研究项目。与威尼斯大学(意大利)和剑桥大学/英国南极调查局合作开发激光消融电感耦合等离子体质谱冰芯成像，以及与新西兰、瑞士、中国、加拿大和巴西同事合作分析冰，从而保持我们在全球冰芯和气候变化研究中的领先地位。同样，元素XR的碳酸盐分析能力的增强将对国家科学基金会资助的缅因湾和南太平洋研究项目产生直接影响。拟议的仪器将促进学术学院(自然科学、林业和农业学院和工程学院)和研究单位-CCI和传感器技术前沿研究所-之间在校园内新的重要合作，并促进与主要地区其他学术和科学机构的新的和更广泛的科学合作。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is for acquisition of new instrumentation to support acquisition of the new LA-HR-ICPMS instrumentation for the trace-element analysis of various environmental samples. This instrumentation will replace the original (and heavily used over two decades) ThermoScientific Element2 ICP-MS installed at the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute (CCI). The new acquisition will significantly expand research capabilities of the CCI/ICP-MS Facility to improve the analysis of aqueous samples, supplemented with a laser ablation (LA) front end for ice, biological, and other solid materials. The current ICP-MS Facility was established in 2002 with an NSF/MRI award, which since then has served as a vital resource for climate, environmental, ecosystem, and engineering research and training at the U. Maine, across the state of Maine and beyond. The routine use and primary support of the Facility come from the Principal Investigators and their collaborators that group under three research areas: glaciochemistry and climate/environmental reconstruction; paleoceanography and marine biogeochemistry; and environmental sensor development and material science engineering.The U. Maine is the State’s Land & Sea Grant university and only PhD granting institution, so the campus is the de facto academic research and research training hub of the state of Maine. The proposed advances of this research & training instrumentation will immediately impact current and future NSF-funded research projects that support extensive national and international collaborations. Specific to this proposal are collaborations with the University of Venice (Italy) and the University of Cambridge/British Antarctic Survey to develop laser ablation ICP-MS imaging of ice cores, and collaborations with New Zealand, Swiss, Chinese, Canadian, and Brazilian colleagues to analyze ice, thereby maintaining our leadership role in global ice core and climate change research. Likewise, the enhanced carbonate analysis capacity of the Element XR will have an immediate impact on NSF-funded research projects in the Gulf of Maine and in the South Pacific. The proposed instrumentation will facilitate new and important collaborations between academic colleges (College of Natural Science, Forestry, and Agriculture and the College of Engineering) and research units - the CCI and the Frontier Institute for Research in Sensor Technology - across the campus, as well as enabling new and broader scientific collaborations with other academic and scientific institutions across Maine.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.