| GEOTRACES is an international program that has been in planning
stages for several years and is underway as of 2007. The guiding mission of of GEOTRACES is to identify processes and
quantify fluxes that control the distributions of key trace elements and isotopes in the ocean, and to establish the
sensitivity of these distributions to changing environmental conditions. Over the next decade, the goal is to conduct
major cruises in all the ocean basins entirely devoted to problems of trace element and isotope geochemistry. For more
information, see the program web page:http://geotraces.org/.
The Sherrell group is funded by NSF (with co-PIs Greg Cutter, Old Dominion University and Ken Bruland, UC Santa Cruz) for 2007-2010 to lead the effort to develop, test, and establish detailed methods for careful and reproducible collection and analysis of dissolved and particulate samples for trace metals studies. The methods developed will then be applied over the future decade-long study. The project entails two ~month-long cruises, one in the Atlantic in Spring 2008 and the second in the Pacific in Spring 2009. Our role in this joint project is to oversee the development of methods for accurate and reproducible collection of particulate matter in several size categories. |