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Microbial drivers of N2O emissions in the Biosphere 2 Tropical Rainforest
Post by Juliana Young The Rainforest at Biosphere 2 is a unique study system because it operates under very high temperatures and has adapted to the Arizona heat. In 2002, Dr. Joost van Haren studied nitrous oxide (N2O) flux in the Rainforest at Biosphere 2 and found that there is a high and low pulse zone of emissions of this gas under the condition of post-drought (van Haren et al., 2005). Our study builds from the foundations of this experiment. We are testing what could be responsible for the spatial difference in N2O gas fluxes. While there are many facets of the Rainforest to study, my interests and area of…
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Soil survey: microbial, chemical and physical drivers of carbon cycle tracers
Two trace gases (carbonyl sulfide and the oxygen isotopes of CO2) show promise to help disentangle carbon cycle processes, but their soil fluxes need additional characterization. As in leaves, we anticipate that carbonic anhydrase (CA) enzymes in soil microbes drive uptake of atmospheric COS by soils (COS + H2O -> CO2 + H2S) and exchange of the oxygen isotopic signature between atmospheric CO2 and water (CO2 + H2O <-> HCO3– + H+). We performed a soil survey to test whether soil microbial CA drive the soil fluxes of these two potential carbon cycle tracers. By measuring the microbial, chemical, and physical properties of a diverse set of soils, we set out to determine…
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Manuscript presenting first yearlong study of carbonyl sulfide fluxes
Our manuscript on the “Seasonal fluxes of carbonyl sulfide in a midlatitude forest” was just recently published in PNAS (document online). Lead author Róisín Commane and I met at Harvard Forest where she installed an Aerodyne Research Inc., laser spectrometer to study the seasonal behavior of carbonyl sulfide (interchangeably called OCS and COS by different groups). Of particular interest are the common pathways to both CO2 and OCS, for example both trace gases react with carbonic anhydrase enzymes in leaves. This commonality may provide a quantitative, independent measure of the photosynthetic pathway for carbon assimilation. In this study, we find that vegetative uptake accounted for 72% of annual uptake of OCS, and nighttime uptake through stomata and…
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Manuscript evaluating a suite of flux-gradient methods for determining ecosystem H2 fluxes
A manuscript I’ve been working on entitled “Ecosystem fluxes of hydrogen: a comparison of flux-gradient methods,” was now been published in Atmospheric Measurement Techniques (view paper online). Our goal was to present a detailed experimental approach for measuring ecosystem fluxes of H2 and to test different so-called “flux-gradient methods” for calculating the H2 fluxes. Some common trace gas flux methods, e.g. eddy covariance, are not available for species like H2 that cannot be measured precisely at high frequencies (<1 Hz). We hope this paper will help inform the design of future studies for which flux-gradient methods might be the best option for measuring trace gas fluxes. Here are a couple…
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Thesis Defense!
I defended my thesis entitled “Field Measurement of the Fate of Atmospheric H2 in a Forest Environment: from Canopy to Soil”. I was honored to receive the 2012 Carl-Gustaf Rossby Prize for my thesis (link to .pdf). It was an incredible feeling to defend. I really enjoyed preparing and giving my thesis defense presentation. It’s not often that one gets to present the culmination of six years of hard work and personal development to colleagues, family, and friends. I am grateful for mentorship from my advisor Ron Prinn, my thesis committee (Steve Wofsy – Harvard, Bill Munger – Harvard, Tanja Bosak – MIT, Colleen Hansel – WHOI, Shuhei Ono – MIT), and…
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ISME conference on “the power of the small”
Last week I attended ISME 14 (International Symposium on Microbial Ecology) in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was a delight to see the city – its juxtaposed giant modern, cool, sterile buildings surrounding the historic old city. More of a delight was unexpectedly running into friends from the MBL Microbial Diversity summer school (2010) and realizing they are now my colleagues. The conference itself was quite good. I appreciated the range of content from very big picture and abstract to focused experimental projects. One message I took away from the community was a sort of -omics backlash, or perhaps whiplash, to the idea that generating more and more -omics data is the…
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Spotlight on H2 fluxes at Harvard Forest
PAOC Spotlight: Back to the forest Interview Micro-organisms have produced dramatic shifts in the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere and continue to be important drivers of ocean- and land-atmosphere exchanges of gases that have a strong influence on atmospheric composition and climate. An interesting example is the microbial influence on atmospheric molecular hydrogen (H2), which dominates the fate of this gas in the atmosphere. H2 is emitted to the atmosphere by about half natural and half anthropogenic, or human-induced, processes but it is predominantly removed from the atmosphere by microorganisms in the soil, which makes this process the most important, yet least understood, player in the atmospheric H2 budget. The MIT Program in…
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I survived the AGU 2011 Fall meeting
I just returned to Boston after the six weeks of travelling. My two weeks in California, filled with conferences and colleagues, was quite different from the intensive and somewhat isolated period spent in India. First stop was San Diego, where I attended the 44th Meeting of Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment (AGAGE) Scientists and Cooperating Networks at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla. Anita Ganesan’s instrument in Darjeeling may pave the way for the first AGAGE site in India, so the crowd was eager to hear her describe our success in deploying her instrument. Her dedicated and diligent work is paying off as she is collecting some of…
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How much energy does H2 supply to soil microbes?
I presented a poster at the at the Ecology of Soil Microorganisms conference in Prague, 2011 on the role of soil microorganisms in dominating the fate of atmospheric molecular hydrogen (H2). Recent work has linked atmospheric H2 uptake to a novel high-affinity [NiFe]-hydrogenase expressed in active Streptomyces sp. cells, and is perhaps not driven by abiotic hydrogenases as was previously thought. Consequently, atmospheric hydrogen may be a 60-85 Tg yr-1 energetic supplement to microbes in Earth’s uppermost soil horizon. To understand the role of this supplement to the soil microbial ecology, this work explores the following questions: What is the importance of atmospheric H2 energy to soil microbial communities relative to…
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Instrument deployment at Harvard Forest
After over a year of designing, building, and testing a custom instrument system to measure fluxes of molecular hydrogen (H2), I deployed the system to the Harvard Forest Long Term Ecological Research site in Petersham, Massachusetts (http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/). With the instrument installed, I will measure hydrogen fluxes for a year to determine the seasonal dynamics of H2 cycling in this mixed deciduous forest, and in particular, to characterize the strong soil sink for atmospheric H2. The instrument shed was tight, and I was packing a lot of equipment. But the move in day was a successful and fun experience thanks to the help of colleagues at Harvard University. This short documentary created by fellow PhD student Ryan Abernathey…