Soliciting interest for an international intercalibration effort

An international intercalibration effort for *total digests of trace elements in suspended marine particulates* (must be willing to use hydrofluoric acid) is being organized, following a short workshop held March 24-25, 2013. We are also soliciting interest at this time for those interested in conducting intercalibrations for 1) major particle composition and mass and 2) weak acid leaches for particulate trace elements on the same samples.

We have opportunities to collect samples for this exercise this coming July 2013 as part of the Dutch-led Mediterranean GEOTRACES cruise (thanks to Hein de Baar and Micha Rijkenberg for providing this opportunity), and will need an idea of interest level to determine how many samples to collect. Because of the short time frame, please respond with your interest to the GEOTRACES International Project Office by Friday, April 19, 2013 indicating which of the three activities (total digests of trace elements, major particle composition and mass, and/or weak acid leaches for trace elements) you are interested in.

Thanks very much,
Phoebe Lam, Maeve Lohan, Andrew Bowie