Hydrogen isotope biogeochemistry reactors in 1988, but nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s added large spikes of radioactive elements to the atmosphere, especially radiocarbon and tritium. This complicated measurements for geologists using radiometric dating of carbon. However, some oceanographers benefited from the tritium increase, utilizing the signal in the water to trace physical mixing of water masses. In biogeochemistry, scientists focused primarily on the stable isotope of deuterium as a tracer for environmental processes, especially the water cycle. The American geochemist Harmon Craig, once a graduate student of Urey's, discovered the relationship between rainwater's hydrogen and oxygen isotope ratios. The linear correlation between
Stable isotope ratio long history of study of these elements is in part because the proportions of stable isotopes in these light and volatile elements is relatively easy to measure. However, recent advances in isotope ratio mass spectrometry (i.e. multiple-collector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry) now enable the measurement of isotope ratios in heavier stable elements, such as iron, copper, zinc, molybdenum, etc. The variations in oxygen and hydrogen isotope ratios have applications in hydrology since most samples will lie between two extremes, ocean water and Arctic/Antarctic snow. Given a sample of water from an aquifer, and a sufficiently sensitive tool to measure