New grants to fund Skidaway Institute research

A series of new research grants will support UGA Skidaway Institute research projects for the coming years.

Julia Diaz is the lead scientist on a $852,906 three-year grant from the National Science Foundation titled “Collaborative Research: Assessing the role of compound specific phosphorus hydrolase transformations in the marine phosphorus cycle.” Julia and her colleague, Solange Duhamel from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, will study how phytoplankton cope with shortages of phosphorus in the ocean, and if phytoplankton in phosphorus-rich environments also exhibit some of the same strategies. Skidaway Institute’s share of the grant is $296,831. The grant began on Sept. 1, 2017.

Cliff Buck has been approved for two new grants.

The first is a four-year, $350,412 award, beginning on January 1, 2018, from the NSF Arctic System Science Program. Cliff will work as part of an international team on the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) program in the central Arctic Ocean. The team plans to lock an icebreaker into the Arctic ice cap for a year and use it as a base of operations to study a wide range of Arctic processes. Cliff’s specialty will be studying the atmospheric deposition of trace elements.

The second is a three-year grant, for $466,135 from the NSF Ocean Section – Chemical Oceanography. It is titled “US GEOTRACES PMT: Quantification of Atmospheric Deposition and Trace Element Fractional Solubility” and will focus on atmospheric deposition to the Pacific Ocean. The grant will fund participation in the planned U.S. GEOTRACES Pacific Meridional Transect (PMT) from Alaska to Tahiti scheduled for September – November 2018 which is the dusty period in the Gulf of Alaska.

Sasha Wagner, Aron Stubbins and Jay Brandes have received an NSF grant totaling $577,082 to study oceanic dissolved black carbon. The project is titled “Constraining the source of oceanic dissolved black carbon using compound-specific stable carbon isotopes.” The grant will begin on February 1, 2018 and run for three years.

Skidaway scientists attend ASLO

Skidaway Institute was well represented at the 2017 Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography Aquatic Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii,  February 26 – March 3.

Aron Stubbins and Sasha Wagner chaired a two-day session titled “The Biogeochemistry of Dissolved Organic Matter.”

Sasha presented her research on “Stable Carbon Isotopes Offer New Insight into the Biogeochemical Cycling of Black Carbon.” Aron, Jay Brandes and A. Ramapo Goranov, from the College of New Jersey were co-authors.

Former Skidaway Institute intern (Stubbins Lab) Camisha Few presented a poster “Photodegradation of Dissolved Organic Carbon Within the Connecticut River Watershed.” Camisha is a student at Florida A&M University. Her co-authors included Aron, Sasha, Kevin Ryan and K. Haiat-Sasson from the University of Rhode Island.

Camisha Few explaining all about CDOM and FDOM photochemistry at S+ASLO 2017

Aron presented his work on “Tree-Dom: DOM from the Crowning Headwaters of the Aquatic Carbon Cycle.” His co-authors included Sasha, T. Dittmar from the University of Oldenburg, Germany, and J.T. Van Stan from Georgia Southern University.

Thais Bittar presented “Growth, Grazing and Virus-Induced Mortality of Bacterioplankton in the Sargasso Sea.” Her co-authors included Karrie Bulski, Elizabeth Harvey, R. Parsons from the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, S. Giovannoni from Oregon State University and C. Carlson from UC-Santa Barbara.

Cliff Buck and Chris Marsay also made presentations. Cliff chaired a session on atmospheric deposition, “Linking atmospheric deposition to the biogeochemistry of aquatic and marine systems.” His co-organizer was Rachel Shelley from LEMAR-Universite de Bretagne Occidentale, France.

Both Cliff and Chris gave talks about data from the Arctic cruise in a session titled “Biogeochemical Cycling Trace Elements and Isotopes in the Arctic Ocean.”  Cliff’s talk was on the aerosol data and titled “Aerosol Concentration, Composition and Fractional Solubility on the US Geotraces Western Arctic Cruise.” In addition to Chris, his co-authors included A. Ebling, P. Morton, B Summers and W. Landing, all from Florida State University. Chris presented melt pond data, “Dissolved and Particulate Trace Elements in Arctic Melt Ponds.” In addition to Cliff, his co-authors included P. Morton, B Summers and W. Landing, all from Florida State University, and S. Rauschenberg and B.S. Twining, both from the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences.

 

Cliff Buck to chair ASLO session

Cliff Buck will chair a session at the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography 2017 Aquatic Sciences meeting which will be held in Honolulu, Hawaii, Feb. 26-March 3.

The chaired session is titled “Linking atmospheric deposition to the biogeochemistry of aquatic and marine systems.” Additional information can be found here:  http://www.sgmeet.com/aslo/honolulu2017/sessionschedule.asp?SessionID=025

He and Chris Marsay will both give talks in a different session, titled “Biogeochemical cycling of trace elements and isotopes in the Arctic Ocean.” For additional information, see:

http://www.sgmeet.com/aslo/honolulu2017/sessionschedule.asp?SessionID=004

Cliff was also selected to participate in an ASLO leadership training workshop. The purpose of the workshop is to build leadership skills and approaches among ASLO members so that they may feel comfortable to take on leadership roles in the Society and other scientific organizations and teams.