SESE: Keck Foundation Laboratory for Environmental Biogeochemistry

This Keck Lab was established with the intent to get scientists directly involved in all aspects of isotope ratio measurements. Far too often scientists accept results from external labs without the ability to evaluate the data quality for themselves. Additionally, direct knowledge of the analytical technique gives individuals a better idea of how to improve their sampling technique and how to incorporate other analyses into their research.

Research groups interested in using these facilities need to provide at least one person who will be trained to prepare and set up samples for analysis. This same person will be responsible for programming their sample sequence, carrying out the analysis, and will also process the results to get the final numbers. This is particularly important as it makes clear the role of the working standards, linearity checks, and estimations of analytical uncertainty. All of this will be supervised and all results obtained in the lab must be checked and approved (signed off) by the lab manager to ensure data quality.

There is still room for analyses for groups that only have a small number of samples to run. If you have special applications or interests, or only a couple of samples to run, please contact the lab manager.