Project Abstract
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geochronology infrastructure provides a community resource for SCEC researchers to draw from for their dating needs. It provides laboratory support and access to expertise for 14C, OSL (Optically Stimulated Luminescence) and cosmogenic 10Be and 26Al methods. By pooling resources, the infrastructure saves SCEC funds while simultaneously increasing flexibility. Researchers cannot precisely predict the amount of geochronology resources needed at the outset of a project. Instead, the SCEC RFP asks for an estimate of needs from each project, and then these needs are drawn from the infrastructure resources. The leader and co-leader of the Geology Disciplinary group coordinate these dating requests with the participating laboratories. This approach avoids wasting resources for the cases where a project ends up not needing as many dates as planned. Likewise, in other cases where important, higher-precision results could be obtained with more geochronology resources, the infrastructure budget allows SCEC to move quickly to take advantage the opportunity. Over the lifetime of SCEC3, funding of the geochronology infrastructure program at approximately 80% of requests was sufficient to meet the collective needs of the SCEC research program, yielding an estimated savings around $90,000. Another advantage of the geochronology infrastructure program is that it streamlines collaboration with participating laboratories. SCEC PIs do not need to pay to run samples. Instead, laboratories charge a single master SCEC account. Under SCEC4, the geochronology infrastructure program is keeping a more detailed record of the sample metadata for reporting purposes. Thus far we have carefully cataloged 14C from the UCI/Keck lab. Cataloging of other laboratory data has yet to be completed. |
