Abstract Choosing an appropriate analyzer to measure concentrations of oxygen (O 2 ) and carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) during biogeochemical cycling studies can be difficult, considering the range of options available. While several studies examine the abilities of specific analyzers, comparison of multiple analyzers and environmental sample types is lacking. We examined the performance of various analyzers across an extensive range of environments, including lake water, soil, sediment, and leaf litter. Analyzers were chosen based on their widespread use and included O 2 optode sensors, membrane inlet mass spectrometry (MIMS), dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) analyzer, cavity ringdown spectroscopy (CRDS), and gas chromatography (GC). We also present a new aquatic sample handling technique that enables the simultaneous determination of both O 2 and CO 2 . Both MIMS and optode sensors perform comparably for O 2 measurements for water samples in terms of speed and reproducibility. However, for the measurement of O 2 in the headspace of enclosed solid samples, MIMS performs better. For CO 2 analysis, MIMS performed best in terms of reproducibility, having the lowest coefficient of variation across all analyzers. Additionally, the MIMS was the only analyzer capable of measuring both gases from both the headspace of enclosed solid and liquid samples as well as directly in liquid samples for dissolved O 2 .
Jakobsson et al. (Tue,) studied this question.