Advances in Isotope Geochemistry
Series Editor
Jochen Hoefs
For further volumes:http://www.springer.com/series/8152
Pete BurnardEditor
The Noble Gases asGeochemical Tracers
123
EditorPete BurnardCentre National de la Recherche
ScientifiqueCentre de Recherches Pétrographiques
et GéochemiquesVandoeuvre-lès-NancyFrance
ISBN 978-3-642-28835-7 ISBN 978-3-642-28836-4 (eBook)DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-28836-4Springer Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012952675
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Preface
This book represents a landmark in the application of noble gases to the
Earth sciences. When you turn to the pages within you will see that this
unique set of tracers has now made the transition from the domain of a
few specialist laboratories to become a standard part of the geochemists’
toolkit in tackling an array of both fundamental and applied science
problems. Although noble gases are used extensively as a dating tool in
geological and environmental systems and are also extensively studied in
cosmochemistry, each of which could fill a book alone, this volume
specifically focuses on how noble gases are used as tracers in terrestrial
systems. This is very much a nuts and bolts ‘how-to-do-it’ book and as
such is complementary to recent reviews that take a more theoretical and
process-oriented approach. This refreshing approach provides essential
reading for understanding the advantages, state-of-the-art analyses, and
current limits, of these tracers in the context of the different terrestrial
tracer applications, some of which are very recent. This is a ‘must’ first
port of call for those just starting in the field and will also be a critical
resource for those in the field who have been around a little longer and
who, like me, always have room to learn and apply new best practice.
It does not seem so long ago when, as a graduate student, I was (and
remain) in awe of the scientists who firmly established the field of noble
gas geochemistry; sitting in meetings with excitement as big egos chal-
lenged each other, with no quarter given, on the origins and evolution of
the Earth and its atmosphere; and the slight clamminess of my hands
when I realised that I would have to defend my own work and ideas in
this arena. Some comfort and a degree of disbelief occurred when I
realised how little then we actually knew about the very structure of the
deep Earth; and how few observations these early but fundamental
models were based on. When applying the noble gases to more practical
matters I still pull out the 1961 paper by Zartmann, Wasserburg and
Reynolds, with the understated title of ‘Helium, argon and carbon in
some natural gases’ that describe the fundamental principles behind how
we use noble gas isotopes today to understand multiphase crustal fluid
systems. Despite arriving a little later to the field, the sense of potential
for noble gases to contribute in a major and fundamental way to our
basic understanding of Earth formation and evolution as well as their
ability to interrogate and quantify the processes controlling so many
natural systems provided a buzz then that still remains today.
v
Fifty one years after Zartmann et al., this book captures the same
sense of excitement, but with half a century of additional community
experience improving sample collection, analysis and data interpretation
of this tracer suite. Central to many chapters in the book are the array of
techniques that we use to release the noble gases from solid samples.
While they might sound like extracts from a medieval torture chamber
handbook, with samples releasing their noble gas information through
being crushed, heated, melted or ablated, the exceptional care and
exactitude that reduces blanks and maximises signal for each application
are detailed here. Where samples are collected as free water, gas or oil,
whether from the depths of the ocean or from commercial oil and gas
boreholes, the system and component features required to collect, store
and preserve robust samples are presented in the respective chapters.
Each sample type also presents its own challenge in preparation before
analysis: removal of water, gas or oil from the vacuum system; cryo-
separation of the noble gases; low blanks; fast sample throughput—all
before the mass spectrometry. It is nevertheless the improvements in
mass spectrometry that form the foundation of the subject expansion
and the reason that noble gases are now a must-have tool in any Earth
or Environmental Science research institute of repute. Electronics
stability, source sensitivity, multiplier and amplification technology,
software control and data handling, magnet stability and speed, mass
resolution, multi-collection. Without these advances, achieving the
analytical reproducibility and precision needed for each application and
unlocking the detail of the processes controlling the natural systems
reviewed here would have been an impossibility.
The noble gases as tracers are still making a significant contribution
to a breadth of science problems that would surely amaze the early
subject pioneers. Their chemical inertness, sensitivity to radiogenic
noble gas input, fluid mixing and physical processing allow the identi-
fication and quantification of the physical environment to be tractable in
a way not possible by any other technique. There is not a single tracer
set in our geochemistry armoury that is quite so powerful or broadly
useful — but perhaps I am writing with a small bias.
In showing how to win the data from the different natural systems,
this volume provides an excellent review of precisely how noble gases are
used across the application landscape. The chapters in this volume have
been arranged logically from the history of their discovery and early uses
to the basics of sample preparation and mass spectrometry and detail
the noble gases in the terrestrial atmosphere that form the basis for most
laboratory standards. These introductory chapters are followed by
global environmental applications that include reconstruction of the
past atmosphere and environment from ice cores, aquifers and lakes,
reconstruction of ocean circulation and nutrient input from ocean
waters and sediment flux. Chapters review how noble gases are applied to
identifying hydrocarbon reserves and, perhaps slightly ironically, also in
assessing the safety of burying the carbon dioxide produced by combus-
tion of oil and natural gas for Man’s energy needs. The book starts to
vi Preface
conclude with chapters that show howmodern and ancient hydrothermal
systems can be understood. The greatest of science challenges tackled by
noble gases is left to the last chapter on tracing the evolution of the
terrestrial mantle, which arguably provided the experience and expertise
that spun out many of the other applications detailed. The description of
how the study of noble gases in mantle materials have revolutionised our
understanding of the nature and origin of volatiles in the Earth and how
the Earth’s mantle has evolved through time is certainly a contribution,
from many, to the basic understanding of our planet that the noble gas
community can be proud of.
Prof. Chris Ballentine
The University of Manchester
Preface vii
Contents
The Noble Gases as Geochemical Tracers:History and Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Pete Burnard, Laurent Zimmermann and Yuji Sano
Noble Gases in the Atmosphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Yuji Sano, Bernard Marty and Pete Burnard
Noble Gases in Ice Cores: Indicators of the Earth’sClimate History. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33Gisela Winckler and Jeffrey P. Severinghaus
Noble Gases in Seawater as Tracers for Physicaland Biogeochemical Ocean Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55Rachel H. R. Stanley and William J. Jenkins
Noble Gas Thermometry in Groundwater Hydrology . . . . . . . . 81Werner Aeschbach-Hertig and D. Kip Solomon
Noble Gases as Environmental Tracers in SedimentPorewaters and Stalagmite Fluid Inclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123M. S. Brennwald, N. Vogel, Y. Scheidegger, Y. Tomonaga,D. M. Livingstone and R. Kipfer
Extraterrestrial He in Sediments: From Recorder of AsteroidCollisions to Timekeeper of Global Environmental Changes . . . 155David McGee and Sujoy Mukhopadhyay
Application of Noble Gases to the Viability of CO2 Storage . . . 177Greg Holland and Stuart Gilfillan
Noble Gases in Oil and Gas Accumulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225Alain Prinzhofer
The Analysis and Interpretation of Noble Gasesin Modern Hydrothermal Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249Yuji Sano and Tobias P. Fischer
ix
Noble Gases and Halogens in Fluid Inclusions:A Journey Through the Earth’s Crust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319Mark A. Kendrick and Pete Burnard
Noble Gases as Tracers of Mantle Processesand Magmatic Degassing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371M. A. Moreira and M. D. Kurz
x Contents