LAUSR

Nitrogen is a primary constituent of Earth’s atmosphere and an essential component of many biological processes. Considerable effort has been dedicated to investigating N cycling in near-surface environments, and recent developments in understanding N incorporation into silicate minerals suggest that the solid earth and lithosphere could provide a substantial reservoir for the planetary N budget. Given the low diffusivity of N in some crustal silicates [1], it is possible that natural minerals exhibit fine-scale heterogeneity in their N contents. The quantity and distribution of this variation can retain a rich record of the kinetic and thermodynamic conditions of formation, and thus it is important to explore analytical methods capable of measuring low-level variations in N from μm-scale regions of solid materials.