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

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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