Jodie and Kotryna (Geochemistry Technician at the Stable Isotope Facility at BGS) in front of the geochemistry labs at BGS.
Jodie Brown undertook a placement in the Stable Isotope Facility part of the Centre for Environmental Geochemistry at the British Geological Survey.
As a technician in the School of Geography at the University of Nottingham, I wanted to come to BGS to see their stable isotope facilities, as this is totally different from anything I work on currently. I knew very little about the practical running of mass spectrometers, so this was a great opportunity to broaden my horizons and expose me to new techniques.
For two days I worked alongside Carol Arrowsmith, who mainly analyses water samples. She uses isotope ratio mass spectrometry to ascertain the proportion of water molecules containing a heavier isotope of oxygen. This information has many uses, for example reconstructing past climate variations from an ice core - as the isotope ratio is locked into the solid. Carol also works with carbonate samples, which are used to measure isotope ratios of carbon and oxygen - this works by dissolving the solid and analysing the CO2 gas evolved. Carbonate analysis, which is also undertaken by Kotryna Savickaite who I also shadowed, provides information about the temperature of the water at which the carbonate formed. Kotryna works on small quantities of carbonate (such as single shells of foraminifera) which can give a highly detailed climate record along a sediment core, for example.
For two of the other days during my visit I worked in the lab with Dr Andrew Smith, preparing samples for phosphate isotope ratio analysis. Although phosphorus itself only has one stable isotope, the four neighbouring oxygen atoms in a phosphate ion can be used to deduce information about the source of the phosphorus. This is useful for example, for tracking pollutants in the environment to determine a source. Overall, I really enjoyed my time at BGS. It was very interesting seeing all the different methods and techniques used, and the huge breadth of applications of stable isotope data. Thank you to everyone who hosted me, who were all very kind and welcoming!
What's next?
The connections with BGS staff will enable work at Nottingham using different machines, allowing us to use new analytical techniques. For example, we already collaborate with the stable isotope facility to run water samples for nitrogen isotopes. However, the increased networking could mean we could use, for example, a different mass spectrometer for looking at small carbonate samples. This is not something we currently do, and could be a useful technique to employ for e.g. tracking short-term temperature change from taking different samples from the same carbonate shell.
For more information on MI Talent visit mitalent.ac.uk.
Technical Placement Scheme visit https://www.mitalent.ac.uk/Technical-Placement-Scheme.
Click here for more info on the BGS Stable Isotope Facility.
Posted on Thursday 19th October 2023