International Arctic Research Center · University of Alaska Fairbanks
The TAG@IARC
The Trace Analysis Group is an IARC-affiliated analytical community working to provide world-class trace-element and nutrient measurements for demanding environmental samples—from sea ice and permafrost to ocean, river, and terrestrial systems.
Built for difficult matrices
Arctic samples are often limited in volume, vulnerable to contamination, chemically complex, and far removed from routine laboratory standards. The TAG exists to meet those constraints with shared facilities, careful methods, and experienced people.
Why The TAG exists
Trace analysis is more than an instrument measurement.
Producing defensible results at very low concentrations requires the entire analytical pathway to work together.
Many questions in Arctic science depend on elements present at trace or ultra-trace concentrations. The signal can be altered by a sampling bottle, airborne dust, a reagent blank, the sample matrix, or an undocumented processing step. Sea ice, brines, snow, permafrost, sediments, and natural waters each present different combinations of salinity, particles, organic matter, and limited sample volume.
The TAG brings analytical planning closer to field science. We work across sample collection, clean handling, preparation, measurement, quality control, and data stewardship so that methods reflect the material being studied and the scientific question being asked.
Our purpose is to sustain advanced analytical capacity at UAF and make it useful to researchers working in Alaska and beyond. That includes developing and verifying methods for difficult matrices, training students and collaborators, maintaining shared facilities, and documenting how each result was produced.
The result should be more than a number: it should be a measurement with known limitations, an auditable history, and enough context to remain useful in future research.
Analytical approach
Methods designed around the sample.
No single preparation or calibration strategy is appropriate for every Arctic matrix. The TAG’s work is organized around three connected responsibilities.
Control contamination
Clean spaces, suitable sampling materials, careful preparation, and appropriate blanks protect signals that may be measured at extremely low concentrations.
Understand matrix effects
Salts, particles, organic matter, and other sample constituents can affect recovery and instrument response. Methods must be tested against the matrices they are intended to measure.
Preserve scientific context
Quality-control results, processing history, calibration information, and data provenance make analytical results interpretable, reproducible, and reusable.
The group
Shared facilities and complementary expertise.
The TAG connects established nutrient analysis, clean-laboratory practice, trace-metal biogeochemistry, emerging high-resolution mass spectrometry, and scientific data systems.
Positive Pressure Laboratory
Clean-space infrastructure at IARC and the new Thermo Scientific Element XR high-resolution ICP-MS, now entering staged commissioning and method verification.
About the laboratory and Element XRNutrient Analytical Facility
Established analysis of nitrate, nitrite, phosphate, silicic acid, and ammonium in marine and freshwater samples.
Methods, instruments, and costsAguilar-Islas Laboratory
Marine trace-metal biogeochemistry, field sampling, and analytical method development with an emphasis on high-latitude systems.
People and expertiseIcy Seas Co-Laboratory
Scientific software, laboratory systems, data stewardship, training, and reproducible workflows that connect instruments to durable evidence.
About Icy Seas Co-LaboratoryDeveloping capacity
High-resolution ICP-MS at IARC.
NSF Major Research Instrumentation support is bringing high-resolution elemental and isotope-ratio measurements to UAF. The Element XR facility will expand in stages as the instrument is installed, methods are developed and verified, and users are trained. Supported matrices, analytes, performance, and access will be published only when they have been demonstrated locally.