Isotope Geochemistry of Oxygen and Hydrogen: A Brief Review

It is obviously impossible in a short report to attempt to review such a broad field as stable isotope geochemistry, unless we focus on some specific lines of investigation. Therefore, attention will be given to only three topics. These topics represent fields of active research in which promising results are now being obtained, but they can also serve to indicate the kinds of problems that may be attacked through measurements of isotope variations in nature. These problems are: (1) oxygen isotope geothermometry; (2) the origin of natural waters; and (3) large-scale isotopic exchange during metamorphism.