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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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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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Manuscript linking consumption of atmospheric H2 to the life cycle of soil-dwelling actinobacteria
Microbe-mediated soil uptake is the largest and most uncertain variable in the budget of atmospheric hydrogen (H2). In Meredith et al. (2014) in Environmental Microbiology Reports, we probe the advantage of atmospheric H2 consumption to microbes and relationship between environmental conditions, physiology of soil microbes, and H2. First, we were interested in whether environmental isolates and culture collection strains with the genetic potential for atmospheric H2 uptake (a specific NiFe-hydrogenase gene) actually exhibit atmospheric H2 uptake. To expand the library of atmospheric H2-oxidizing bacteria, we quantify H2 uptake rates by novel Streptomyces soil isolates that contain the hhyL and by three previously isolated and sequenced strains of actinobacteria whose hhyL sequences span the known hhyL diversity. Second, we…
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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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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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MBL microbial diversity course
In the summer of 2010, I spent six inspiring, challenging, and chaotic weeks at the Marine Biological Laboratory Microbial Diversity Course in Woods Hole, MA. I hoped to take full advantage of the opportunity granted by course directors Steve Zinder and Dan Buckley of Cornell to plunge head on into the world of microbiology. I was eager to learn the theory and hands-on methods to study the microbial world, which has such a profound impact on atmospheric composition, and this course gave me a chance to explore my interests in a way not offered anywhere else.