University of Arizona LA-IRMS Visit

Last week, Garry Armstrong, Director at Sercon, combined attendance at the Winter Plasma Conference with a visit to LA-IRMS customer Soumaya Belmecheri, Associate Professor at international Laboratory of Tree Ring Research (LTRR) at the University of Arizona.

In this video during to tour of her custom designed lab, Soumaya describes how it will enable her research programme looking at climate variability and soil activity, including dating earthquakes and landslides in the tropics using LA-IRMS techniques, which allow her and her team to bypass traditional dendrochronology methods. You can see the full video below.

Soumaya’s lab houses the January 2025 Sercon installation of an HS2022, a Pyro EArth, and a Cryo-LA with Teledyne LSX-213 GC+.

The instruments are mainly used for laser ablation of tree ring samples, (δ¹³C from CO₂ analysis using cryo-trapping). HTEA Pyrolysis for δ ¹⁸O (CO analysis) & δ HD data. Dual δ ¹⁵N & δ ¹³C data (produced via combustion/reduction N₂ & CO₂ analysis), all from tree and possibly soil samples.

Garry commented “It’s always fascinating to see our instrumentation live in labs, and it’s especially exciting to be shown how our equipment and LA-IRMS techniques are really changing the face of research in the field of dentrochronology”.

Garry travelled with Lucas Smith from Teledyne Photon Machines, part of the collaboration that developed the technique and which also included Montana Puscas from Terra Analitic.

You can read more about the University of Arizona’s installation here.

If you’d like to talk to us about how our instruments can support your research, just email sales@sercongroup.com, we’d love to hear from you.

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