A portable, field-based isotope analyzer for carbon dioxide and methane

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We propose to obtain a Picarro G2201-i mass analyzer for simultaneous carbon isotopic measurements of CO2 and CH4 in the field and in the lab. This instrument is lightweight and portable and is ideally suited to our diverse field applications in environments ranging from the high Arctic through northern peatlands to erupting volcanoes. Most significantly, it is the only such instrument available which can measure the isotopic composition of both CO2 and CH4 simultaneously or separately as required. Hence it is equivalent to lab-based instrumentation costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Our applications with this instrument are varied and strongly field-based. They include characterizing the isotopic composition of CO2 from volcanoes and fault zones, understanding sources and sinks of CO2 and CH4 in northern peatlands, detecting changes in microbial methanogenesis and methanotrophy on diurnal, seasonal, and inter-annual timescales, determining the sources of soil CO2 and CH4 fluxes in the Canadian high Arctic, detecting in situ microbial activity in cryoenvironments at subzero temperatures from permafrost, and identifying thermogenic vs. biogenic gas in groundwaters from the St. Lawrence Lowlands in Québec. The principal hands-on users of the instrument will be our students, including undergraduates, graduates students, and postdoctoral fellows. They will become expert users and collect crucial data for their research projects. We will identify one senior student from each of our groups to be super-users, i.e., go-to people for training. We the PI’s will work closely with these people for applications development.