Background

Stable isotope analysis can be used in ecological studies to trace chemical movement through the environment.  A common application is to use the isotopic composition of a mixture to determine the proportions of various sources in the mixture, using mathematical mixing models. The publications listed below describe three mixing models developed by EPA, and the application of mixing models to environmental problems. For further details and links to downloadable models, see the Stable Isotope Mixing Models for Estimating Source Proportions page.

Publications describing the IsoError, IsoConc, and IsoError stable isotope mixing models

Phillips & Gregg (2001) – IsoError

Phillips & Koch (2002) – IsoConc

Koch & Phillips (2002) – IsoConc

Phillips & Gregg (2003) – IsoSource

Phillips et al. (2005) - IsoSource

Publications describing application of stable isotope mixing models to environmental problems (from EPA research)

Phillips (2001)

Felicetti et al. (2003)

Newsome et al. (2004)

Phillips & Eldridge (2006)

Walters et al. (2007)

Newsome et al. (2007a)

Newsome et al. (2007b)

Granek et al. (2009)

Painter et al. (2009)

Ward et al. (2011)

Vaslet et al. (2011)

MacArthur et al. (2011)

Phillips et al. (2012)

Brooks et al. (2012)

Vaslet et al. (2012)

Parnell et al. (2013)

Semmens et al. (2013)

Pacella et al. (2013)

Dabrowski et al. (2014)

Soto-Centeno et al. (2014)

Phillips et al. (2014)

Lafferty et al. (2015)

Vaslet et al. (2015)