Research progress and prospect of oxygen isotope technique in soil-vegetation-ecology-environment studies

This paper is the result of environmental geological survey engineering.

Objective Oxygen is one of the basic elements that make up living matter, and the oxygen cycle in nature is the basic guarantee for life activities. Oxygen isotope technology is a powerful tracer that can effectively indicate biogeochemical cycling processes and has been widely used in ecological and environmental research.

Methods This paper reviewes the fractionation mechanism of oxygen isotopes and its application in soil-vegetation-ecological environment by reviewing a large number of literatures on oxygen isotopes.

Results Depending on the large isotope mass ratio difference, oxygen isotopes can undergo the greatest degree of isotope fractionation under natural conditions. The application of oxygen isotopes mainly includes three aspects: (1) Tracing the source of environmental pollutants; (2) Paleoenvironment and paleoclimate restoration; (3) Tracing the geographical origin of food (animals).

Conclusions In practice, oxygen isotopes are usually used together with other isotopes (hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, etc.) to track multi-dimensional climate, vegetation development, and geographical location. In the future, oxygen stable isotopes can be combined with substitute models in the fields of global change, such as tree rings, foraminifera, loess, and salt lakes, and play a more important role in environmental ecology research.