The Romberg Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies
I work with Dr. Ed Carpenter at the Romberg Tiburon Center for Environmental studies. We studing marine microbial ecology , and our main focus is phytoplankton dynamics throughout the world's oceans.
My research is focused on the Amazon River Plume; this is the region of the Atlantic Ocean into which the Amazon River flows. Nutrients from the river fuel phytoplankton growth, which supports a robust regional food web. Compared to the surrounding ocean (which is similar as a terrestrial desert), the plume is an extremely productive region. This productivity effects the global carbon cycle, as it sequesters an estimated 2.1 teragrams of carbon dioxide (The equivalent of the yearly emissions of 240,000,000 cars) from the atmosphere into the seafloor.
I am part of "Amazon iNfluence on the Atlantic: CarbOn export from Nitrogen fixation by DiAtom Symbioses" (ANACONDAS), an NSF sponsored project focused on the carbon cycle in the region. My role is to estimate the dissolved organic carbon (DOC) production by the phytoplankton. This DOC has many potential fates - it fuels a secondary food web called the microbial loop, it may aggregate and be sequestered on the seafloor, it can return to the atmosphere as CO2, and some will remain in the water column for thousands of years.
Although only a small fraction of the carbon dioxide used by phytoplankton becomes DOC, it is still a huge constituent of the marine carbon pool. My research will just scratch the surface of the dissolved organic carbon dynamics in the plume.
My thesis defense presentation, May 2016!
