Radiocarbon short course in Jena, Germany

The week was very nice. Lucky us, the schedule was not very intense. However, everything  was very advance, and hard to understand. One of the first lecture was the nomenclature in radiocarbon studies, and at that time I understood that this week was going to be tricky... The first thing was that the abbreviation BP didn't mean Before present, but instead, before physics, 1950. When measuring 14C (=radiocarbon) you will have a value that mirrors the concentration in the atmosphere at the time something die. However, if you for example analyzing a soil sample, the carbon entering the soil comes from plants and will because of that lag behind compared to the atmosphere. So, the concentration of 14C in the soil mirrors the concentration in the atmosphere at the time it was fixed by the plant. And for complicating it a bit more, at 1963 there was a peak in the 14C concentration of the atmosphere because of bombs. So, unfortunately the equations for calculating the age of something using 14C is rather complicated since you must know if the sample died before or after BP (=1950, when the concentration started to increase)... So, to sum up, to analysing the age of a sample using radiocarbon is not as straight forward as I once thought. The next complicated thing is that the amount of 14C in samples is in the range of 10^-12, or in other words, very low. A sample will be contaminated very easy. Just imagine the age of a plastic bag or a plastic pot. Plastic is made of oil, and the carbon in oil is very very old, and may simply destroy your sample. You also have to compare your 14C concentration in the sample with the concentration of 13C to get an idea of the mass fraction that may occur when carbon is transported and when it reacts. So everything is just getting more and more complicated, and it seems like you can destroy your sample at so many times that I don't think I would dare to even try. 

Concentration of 14C in atmosphere, showing the bomb peak at 1963.
if you have sample with 140 ppm you may not know if it is from 1960 of 1975.. 

The facilities in Jena was very nice. A very large lab with a AMS (accelerator mass spectrometer) for measuring the 14C in a sample.

The week in Jena offered a lot of information, weissbier, potatoes and BBQ. a really nice week. As a bonus Ralph Keeling was giving a talk in Jena the very same week as we was there, Good stuff!

Course in Jena

Leaving sweden on sunday morning, going to Jena, Germany. It is a short course (6 days) about radiocarbon (=14C) and how to use and measure it.. It seems like the course is generous, very good speakers and lab exercises. This course is necessary for the Greenland project where we will measure the age of carbon consumed by microorganisms during incubation of permafrost soil. This will be very interesting and contribute to further knowledge about how the arctic environment will respond to a global warming. I'm really looking forward to Greenland and also this course in Jena, it will be very useful. I'll take some photos and write something about the course when home again. 

Earlier in june I participated on a course in Denmark, it was very interesting and I learned a lot. A very ambitious assignment had to be done and approved after the course, and I'm very happy that I passed! 

I'm thinking about applying for at PhD in Trondheim, Norway. It's in ecology and ecophysiology, and it seems very interesting. Last date for applying is 15 of aug. 

Thats all from now

Summer activities

The summer started in denmark, a PhD course about Soil organic matter and isotopes labelling. Very interesting (maybe a bit to much about agriculture)! Next thing comming up is a radiocarbon course in Jena, Germany. Going there the 15th of july, looking forward to that. Today I'm starting one week work as a field assistant in a bio-inventory project in the Swedish mountains, sleeping in tent and gonna be eaten by mosquitoes and sunflies, yehaa!

I will have four weeks holliday after Jena and than go to Greenland for sampling.

And thats about it!