PolarisProject

Who I Am

I am an aquatic an aquatic ecologist and biogeochemist interested in carbon and nutrient cycling between terrestrial and aquatic systems, the cryosphere and atmosphere.

I am also one of the organizers of the Polaris Project. I have worked in Cherskii since 2000, and have a passion for science in Russia, particularly when it involves methane and fire! To view an example of lighting arctic lake methane on fire, please go to research videos link at my website.

Research Interests

I conduct research on methane and carbon dioxide emissions from arctic and temperate lakes and wetlands. I am interested in processes that govern greenhouse gas emissions from lakes, including thermokarst (permafrost) thaw, modern plant productivity, geology, and landscape scale changes lake area that result in both positive and negative feedbacks to climate change.

My research program uses environmental gradients, isotopes, and remote sensing as powerful tools for understanding basic patterns and processes in lake ecosystems. I use field, laboratory and modeling experiments to address research questions at the ecosystem scale, and environmental gradients and remote sensing to apply these results in a landscape-scale context.

I am a stream biogeochemist and ecologist who has studied the fate of terrestrial-derived organic matter and aquatic primary production in a variety of aquatic ecosystems spanning from small headwater streams to large estuaries. I have instructed courses in Freshwater Ecology, Ecosystem Ecology, and Environmental Biology at Holy Cross College annually since 2002. The primary objective of my current research is to identify linkages between forest and stream ecosystem fluxes of energy and nutrients at a wide range of temporal scales, from hourly to annual and longer timescales. Specifically, I seek to identify factors controlling C, N, and P transfers from a variety of forested watersheds to coupled headwater streams throughout diverse hydrologic conditions. This collaborative-research program integrates three important frontier areas of ecosystem science and global change biology: 1) defining linkages between coupled biogeochemical cycles in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems with respect to carbon and nutrient losses, 2) delineating biogeochemical mechanisms resulting in periodic and continuous carbon and nutrient losses from terrestrial ecosystems over a wide range of temporal scales, and 3) forecasting how compositional and hydrological changes in terrestrial ecosystems will impact adjacent and downstream aquatic ecosystems. The Polaris Project will allow me to greatly expand existing research and teaching efforts to include under studied Arctic ecosystems that are critical to our understanding of global terrestrial and marine ecosystem linkages.

The Polaris Project is moving forward. The team is in the process of selecting the inaugural class for the field class and we are going start blogging about our activities in earnest. The various team members are going to start making short posts that highlight their research and tell us something about who they are and what they do. So, without further ado…