Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve

18 Mar, 07 AM - 19 Mar, 07 AM

Microorganisms constitute half of all biomass on Earth and number as many as 10^31 individual cells. They are responsible for half of all photosynthesis and cycle and control the distribution of all biologically-important elements on Earth ? yet we are still discovering abundant groups of microbes that were unknown two decades ago. Understanding how microbial diversity ? including species richness and diversity in metabolic functioning ? may vary in space in time is, as a consequence, incredibly challenging. But this is crucial in a changing Earth system, where microbial communities have the potential to mitigate or exacerbate global environmental change through the production and consumption of environmentally-significant compounds. The focus of my proposed research is to comprehensively examine marine microbial diversity across a network of sites strung along the California coast that may include Big Creek Reserve. My work will employ next-generation DNA sequencing technologies to catalog the diversity of water column microbial communities, and I will also use a range of biogeochemical approaches to examine their activity. After collecting baseline information, I am interesting in examining how this baseline may shift in coming decades. At present we are mostly unable to predict how microbes will respond to global environmental change, but they are likely to be highly sensitive to changes in temperature or seawater pH (i.e., acidification). My end goal is determine what these exact sensitivities are, and what the implications are for predicting the effects of global change in coastal ecosystems and in the global ocean.

Visit #20767 @Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve

Approved

Under Project # 21345 | Research

Mapping microbial communities along the California coast and assessing their sensitivity to environmental change

faculty - University of California, Merced

Reservation Members(s)

J Michael Beman Mar 18 - 19, 2010 (2 days)

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Redwood Camp 1 Mar 18 - 19, 2010