Scientific Advances Made Possible by User Facilities

National scientific user facilities are becoming increasingly available to many different scientific communities in a number of countries. There is a growing use of these facilities by Earth and environmental scien- tists to study a broad range of materials and processes under realistic P–T and environmental conditions at unprecedented levels of energy and spatial resolution and elemental and isotopic sensitivity. The results of these studies are providing new insights into biogeochemical processes operating at Earth’s surface as well as petrological, geochemical, and geophysical processes in Earth’s interior. The availability of national user facilities is changing scien- tific approaches and is leading to multidisciplinary studies that were not possible a decade ago.