I measure the flux of H2, both above and below the temperate forest canopy at Harvard Forest in central Massachusetts, with the goal of contributing to our understanding of the significant microbial soil sink for atmospheric hydrogen.
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…
Biologist/architect team Tobi Lyn Schmidt and Mike Bogan created a course linking artists, designers, architects, and biologists from the California College of the Arts (CCA) and Stanford University. I served as a postdoc mentor to help inspire and guide the process of cross-hybridizing biology and design (some examples) with three really talented undergraduate CCA students:…
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…
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…
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…
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…