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ISOTOPE HYDROLOGY LABORATORY (WATER QUALITY MANAGEMENT BRANCH, WATER SUPPLY AND WATER RESOURCES DIVISION, NRMRL)
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Description:
The mission of NRMRL's Water Supply and Water Resources Division's Isotope Hydrology Laboratory (IHL) is to resolve environmental hydrology problems through research and application of naturally occurring isotopes. The emergent field of isotope hydrology follows advances in analytical isotope chemistry and may yield improved resolution of water supply and water resource problems in our nation's watersheds. Naturally occurring isotopes are tracers of water and solute provenances, recharge events, subsurface geochemical processes, biogeochemical cycles, soil-water-atmosphere interactions, contaminant hydrology, groundwater flow components and pathways, residence times in surface waters and groundwaters, plus many other applications. The IHL focuses its isotope measurements on light stable isotopes and selected radionuclides. Light stable isotopes, for example, have large relative mass differences, thus providing measurable fractionations during chemical and physical reactions in the hydrosphere. Decay of environmental radioactive isotopes, for example, provide ages of water systems and tracers of many anthropogenic activities. For more information on the IHL, visit the website at http://www.epa.gov/ORD/NRMRL/wswrd/ihl/mission.htm. To access directly from this website, click on downloads on the navigation bar.