If you are new to stable isotopes, check out the Wikipedia entry.  The US Geological Survey also has a list of stable isotope resources (check out the periodic table). Geochemisty by W.M Wright, Cornell, with a chapter on isotopes, is available for review online. Other general information links are at "boggy's links", links for mineralogists, and from Cornell, "Geochemistry on the World Wide Web". More links to stable isotope resources can be found on our "links" page. Also, look at the "board" page to see the research activity of our board members, and the "citations" page to see the outcome of the work that they and others who use this facility have done here. For a powerpoint presentation about our facility (6+ Mb), click here.

ESCSIS grew out of Dr. Danny Rye's Stable Isotope Laboratory in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale University. New faculty members, new instruments, and increased interest from other departments led to the formation of this facility under the auspices of the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies. The facility started in February of 2002 with Dr. Danny Rye's Finnigan MAT 251 being moved into our current location,  the then-new Environmental Sciences Center, Class of 1954 building. With the participation of our board members: Dr. Danny Rye, Dr. Karl Turekian, Dr. Ruth Blake and Dr. Mark Pagani (Dept. of Geology and Geophysics),  Dr. David Post (Dept. of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology), and Dr. Gaboury Benoit and Dr. Peter Raymond (School of Forestry and Environmental Studies), their departments, YIBS, and Yale University, new instruments and peripherals began arriving. 

Currently, we have a wide range of Stable Isotope Ratio mass spectrometers (three MAT 253's, a DeltaPlus XP, and a DeltaPlus Advantage) and an even wider array of peripherals (several ThermoFinnigan Trace GCs and GCCs, H-device, TC/EA and Conflo III, GasBench, and a Costech ECS4010 elemental analyzer with a Conflo III, tube cracker, etc.). These allow us to look at a number of isotopic systems, ¹³C and ¹⁵N from plant and animal tissue, ¹⁸O on phosphates and sulfates, and compound specific work with ¹³C and ²H. As the participating labs and projects grow and develop, more protocols and procedures are being developed and implemented. This center is set up as a facility. Users are expected to prepare and, after training, run their own samples. We will gladly help people design their projects, and work with them in the development and implementation of new protocols. The center also has other equipment and set-ups that can be used in sample preparation, e.g. micro-balance , dental drill and vacuum lines. Currently the board members' laboratories and their collaborators are the major users of this facility. However, the center is open to all members of the Yale Community and the stable isotope community at large.

Special thanks to everyone who helped us move to our new location and setup our instruments. The movers and the shakers (BKM--luckily, very little was shaken up), the coordinators(Yale/BKM/Thermo/Dimeo/etc.), the guy who manually operated the elevator doors in KGL, Finnigan folk (sounds better than Thermo-filliates), ESC building managers (Dimeo), Yale managers, and, of course, the Class of 1954 for financing the building. Many individuals were involved in this project, and though we can't list them all, we do like to thank them all. 

We'd also like to thank those who directly helped with establishing and keeping projects and instruments running through the transition. Roger Husted from Thermo moved the old 251 and worked through the ongoing construction to get it back up and running. Jim Burdett from Thermo who tolerated us for two installs, the 253 and XP, along with all the new peripherals. And Burt Wolff and Melinda Foland were here from Thermo for the Advantage install and the update to the 253 respectively. Brett Tipple from Mark Pagani's lab was the key person in getting the GC/GCC working, and Nikolai Pedentchouk helped implement GC hydrogen runs. Jim Greenwood along with Alexandr Surkov and Yuhong Laing, all from Ruth Blake's lab, were instrumental in getting the TC/EA running. Gaku Takimoto, working here with David Post, spent a lot of time helping us with the EA. Ephraim Taylor, a Dartmouth undergrad working summers in Danny Rye's lab, has been instrumental in keeping most everything running--and was actually able to get real science done too. He's currently in graduate school and the Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas, Austin, working with Dr. Sharon Mosher. Bob Rye's lab at the USGS in Denver, especially Craig Johnson and Cynthia Kester (now at Harvard), helped get started with the new stuff, as did Kate Freeman's lab at Penn State, especially Dennis Walizer.  Albert Colman, who graduated out of Ruth Blake's lab before our move, provided us with a lot of insight on TC/EA work. Short courses, at SIRFER (Jim Ehleringer, University of Utah) and for ISL at USGS Reston Stable Isotope Laboratory (Isodat 2.0 Scripting language, Tyler Coplen from USGS and Holger Jeglinski from Thermo amongst others), and specialized standards for the GC work, Kate Freeman's laboratory and commercially from Arndt Schimmelmann's laboratory at Indiana University, were very helpful to facility members. And we would also like to thank previous laboratory managers, especially John Kingston, now at Emory, who kept the 251 and the Apple-IIe alive and kicking.