Project: Preparation and Distribution of DOC Consensus Reference Materials 2022-2025

NSF Award Abstract:
Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in the world ocean is one of the major pools of actively cycled carbon on Earth. DOC holds as much carbon as the living biomass on all continents combined. It is vital to understand the movement and transformations of this carbon pool to understand the Earth’s carbon cycle. The ability to measure and track this large pool of carbon and its dynamics requires close collaboration between dozens of marine laboratories worldwide. Ensuring that all these laboratories are making accurate DOC measurements requires a way to confirm that their analyses are consistent and comparable to the other laboratories. This award provides support for a program that prepares and distributes a seawater standard for DOC concentration that is set by international consensus. The University of Miami will continue a consensus reference material (CRM) program that was first developed in 1998 in support of consistent, high-quality measurements of dissolved organic carbon by the international ocean chemistry community. With continuation of the work, the US and international communities will be able to continue to make reliable measurements of a major marine carbon reservoir, thereby advancing society’s ability to assess changes in the marine carbon cycle and the role of the ocean in climate change. This program provides training opportunities for students and technicians in the lead investigator's lab and supports his teaching and service work.

With continued strong international efforts to investigate the marine carbon cycle, the existing CRM program provides the necessary benchmark for globally comparable marine DOC measurements. Water from the deep Florida Strait (~42 mol/kg DOC) will be collected, placed into ampoules, and distributed to the US and international community. Since program launch, >374,000 vials of reference waters have been distributed to >300 US and international laboratories in 45 nations, at a rate of ~27,000 vials/year in CY21. With renewal of the program for a 3-year period of support, distribution of reference materials from the upper (SSR), mid (MSR) and deep (DSR) waters of the ocean, as well as low carbon reference waters (LCW), supports the analytical work of the DOC community. Further, a new product developed during the prior award will be continued: DOC-TN Determination Kits. The kit comes with all that is necessary to analyze samples for the determination of DOC and total nitrogen (TN), including 4 calibration standards for Carbon and Nitrogen, and 4 reference materials (DSR, MSR, SSR and LCW). It also includes the Excel template, guiding the sequence of standards, CRMs and samples for each analytical run. This kit meets the needs of those who are seeking to build their analytical capabilities, following guidelines provided by the PI’s lab.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.