Collaborative Research: Research Infrastructure: CFS (Track III) Cosmogenic Nuclides in Earth Science Research: Allied facilities for sample preparation, analysis, and training

Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) is a technique used to measure exceedingly rare materials produced as cosmic rays interact with rocks, soil, and Earth’s atmosphere. Using these data, scientists can determine the timing of events that have the potential to impact human endeavors. Some catastrophic changes, like floods or earthquakes, occur over short time-scales, while others, landscape erosion and the growth and demise of ice sheets, occur over longer time-scales, thousands to millions of years.

These changes directly impact the welfare of human populations world-wide. This award renews funding for the Purdue Rare Isotope Measurement Laboratory (PRIME Lab) and the University of Vermont (UVM) Community Cosmogenic Facility. These two facilities will collaborate to produce a national, multi-user facility dedicated to the measurement of cosmogenic radionuclides using accelerator mass spectrometry.

Doing so allows the combined facility to train students and researchers from dozens of universities within the US that do not have these capabilities or the funds to create them. At the University of Vermont, students learn how to perform the physical and chemical preparation of samples and then participate in the measurement of their samples on the PRIME Lab AMS.

The interaction between students, faculty, and professional staff at PRIME Lab and University of Vermont facilitates interaction with geologists, chemists, and physicists, providing a unique opportunity to expand the educational opportunity beyond the focus of specific research projects. An essential component of this award is outreach to underrepresented communities, which will provide students hands-on opportunities to participate in geologic field work, laboratory instruction, and exposure to nuclear physics measurement techniques.

The collaborative facility goals are to provide allied sample preparation, chemical extraction, and AMS measurements of cosmogenic and other long-lived radionuclides to the geoscience community. The first goal of this proposal is the continuance of this sample preparation and measurement capability for the NSF and geoscience community. PRIME Lab has provided AMS measurements for the geoscience community since the early 1990’s.

PRIME Lab provides measurements of 10Be, 14C, 26Al, 36Cl, and 129I in terrestrial geologic samples. PRIME Lab routinely measures thousands of unknowns annually for researchers, including those in the NSF community, but the laboratory can neither keep pace with demand and adequately train enough “next-generation” cosmogenic nuclides researchers. Accordingly, a significant goal of this award is the establishment of additional sample preparation facilities for the geoscience community.

The combination of the AMS measurement capabilities at PRIME Lab with the sample preparation facilities at UVM has value beyond just the combination of two facilities. Combining the groups enables us to explore techniques that allow the facility to streamline some of the processes, identify potential problems in the application of cosmogenic nuclides, allow for unique opportunities to train the next generation of cosmogenic nuclide researchers, and develop next-generation measurement techniques and applications.

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.