Tag Archives: Dutkiewicz

Phytoplankton - the foundation of the oceanic food chain. Image courtesy of the NOAA MESA Project.

Plankton can save the ocean. But who will save the plankton?

Research

Read this post by Lauren Hinkel via Oceans@MIT

When it comes to climate change and the oceans, MIT Principal Research Scientist Stephanie Dutkiewicz weighs in on why it’s not just warming oceans we need to worry about. Plankton — that are crucial for carbon sequestration and oxygen production — have been discovered behaving strangely, but they may point the way to better geoengineering and understanding of trends in marine populations and ecology.

Dutkiewicz’s research examines how the physics and chemistry of the ocean determines phytoplankton biogeography, and how in turn those organisms affect their environment.

Read her comments in New Scientist.

 

Dutkiewicz, S., J.J. Morris, M.J. Follows, J. Scott, O. Levitan, S.T. Dyhrman, and I. Berman-Frank, 2015, Impact of Ocean Acidification on the Structure of Future Phytoplankton Communities. Nature Climate Change, doi: 10.1038/nclimate2722

 

NO3, Fe, and diazotroph biomass - observations (left) and model (right) over top 50 m - from Fig 1, Dutkiewicz et al, 2014

Life on the Edge – How shifting marine province boundaries could provide a new metric for global change

Climate Change, Diversity and Biogeography, Nitrogen Fixation, , , ,

In their new competition theory paper, appearing in the 2014 issue of Biogeosciences, Dutkiewicz et al examine the sensitivity of the biogeography of nitrogen fixers to a warming climate and increased aeolian iron deposition in the context of a global earth system model. Continue reading →

Dutkiewicz, S., Ward, B. A., Scott, J. R., and Follows, M. J. (2014) Understanding predicted shifts in diazotroph biogeography using resource competition theory, Biogeosciences, 11, 5445-5461, doi: 10.5194/bg-11-5445-2014.