Prospects for the new frontiers of earth and environmental sciences

Abstract

One of the major advances in environmental geochemistry, over the past two decades, has been the introduction of Accelerator-based Mass Spectrometry (AMS) for radiocarbon dating and for investigating terrestrial surface processes through trace quantities of cosmic-ray produced nuclides. During October 2006, a symposium at the University of Tokyo celebrated 50,000 hours of AMS operations at the Tokyo “Micro Analysis Laboratory, Tandem Accelerator (MALT)”. MALT is one of 10 current AMS facilities in Japan but the only one capable of analyzing multiple nuclides. More than 20 talks and over 30 posters were presented covering a diverse range of AMS studies, including, radiocarbon dating, measurements in ice cores, progress in instrumentation, and analyses of in-situ-produced nuclides. © 2008, Elsevier Ltd.