I have loved being on and around the ocean as long as I can remember. I'm presently the PI of the Coastal Carbon - Terrestrial Influence (CCTI) project. My interests focus on the biogeochemistry and ecology of coastal regions that are influenced by riverine discharge.

I'm presently working on two strands of research. The first seeks to characterize distributions of carbon dioxide, air-sea carbon exchange and productivity in riverine-influenced coastal regions. Rivers deliver inorganic and organic carbon, as well as a variety of macro and micronutrients known to stimulate coastal productivity. This suite of riverine constituents affects the way in which carbon is transformed and ultimately moved out of the coastal system by advective, air-sea or benthic exchange. Although the annual flux of land-ocean carbon is relatively small in the global carbon budget, it is of the same magnitude as the entire air-sea carbon exchange. We presently do not know what fraction of this carbon is respired and ventilated to the atmosphere, or is removed via other processes.

Our group has recently discovered that the optical and physical data we measure on the Coastal Observatory cruises contains valuable information related to biogeochemical cycling and rates of biologically mediated carbon uptake or release. Many of our ship measurements have analogues that can be estimated using satellite data. The goal of this work is to develop innovative satellite classification and algorithm application techniques to quantify in-water CO2 concentrations and rates of community production in coastal and estuarine waters.

My second strand of research involves the use of data from a variety of space-borne sensors to identify and classify estuarine and river plumes of the world. During my thesis work with Dr. Janet Campbell, we developed satellite methods that enable the detection of coastal regions that are dominated by either riverine or wind-driven resuspension processes. For this work we used observed and modeled river data in conjunction with satellite ocean-color and scatterometer wind data. The results of this work allow researchers to focus on different coastal provinces, which often have similar, complex ocean color signatures. The beauty of ocean satellite data is that it provides researchers with a global view. As such, we are presently working to scale our methods to map regions of coastal riverine and wind influence to the global scale.

I am also interested in developing more advanced plume detection methodologies in order to efficiently study the biogeochemical dynamics of plumes at broad spatial scales. CCTI projects that show promise involve the coupling of physical flow fields with ocean color data to study the trajectory and persistence of surface plumes, and the use of MODIS fluorescence data to help segregate river-derived constituents from biomass produced in-situ.