Seminar and Events Schedule

Dr. Gavin McNicol will present on FLUXNET-CH4 synthesis activity: Data-driven modeling of wetland methane fluxes from sites to the globe. Dr. McNicol is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He obtained his PhD in ecosystem science at the University of California at Berkeley in 2016. His current research explores ecosystem-climate interactions across microbial to planetary scales with a focus on quantifying soil carbon stocks and greenhouse gas fluxes in wet environments including wetlands, temperate rainforests, and waste systems.

Atmospheric methane is rising at an unprecedented rate and now accounts for a quarter of contemporary climate change. Wetlands represent the largest natural source of methane but emissions estimates and their response to warming remains uncertain. Here I will present new data and model products arising from the FLUXNET-CH4 synthesis activity, which was launched in 2018 with the long-term goal to reduce wetland methane source uncertainties by compiling existing and facilitating new surface methane flux observations. I will first recount the development of the FLUXNET-CH4 Version 1.0 dataset, which contains ~4.5 million half-hourly methane flux observations across 81 terrestrial sites globally. I will then discuss two FLUXNET-CH4 machine learning applications in wetland methane flux gap-filling and global upscaling, with a focus on method advances for model validation and uncertainty quantification.

No additional detail for this event.

Modeling marine plankton using a trait-based approach: benefits and limitations.  Jessica Luo received her B.A. and M.S. from Stanford University in 2007, and her Ph.D. in Marine Biology and Fisheries from the University of Miami in 2015. Dr. Luo completed her postdoctoral training at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO, before moving to Princeton, NJ in 2019 to join the research staff at the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.

Marine plankton are incredibly speciose ocean ‘drifters’ that sit at base of the marine food chain, producing half of the global net primary productivity. They also serve as the primary contributors to the ocean biological pump, a collection of processes that transport carbon and nutrients from the surface oceans to depth, and are projected to shift substantially due to climate change. Efforts at modeling marine ecosystems and biogeochemistry on a global scale have either focused on very simplistic representations of plankton or complex, size-spectrum models with O(100) size classes of plankton, yet intermediate solutions for IPCC-class models have proved to be elusive. Here I discuss two trait-based modeling approaches for marine plankton communities. First, I present a trait-based model with full biogeochemistry, using size as the “master trait,” enabled for the Community Earth System Model (CESM). Secondly, I show that using size-independent traits in the GFDL-COBALT model can enable the representation of a critical but under-sampled group of zooplankton that have an outsize impact on the biological pump. Finally, I discuss ways to combine an emerging set of plankton observational tools with modeling to create improved global maps of plankton ecological traits.

Background Check: The Importance of Background Concentrations in Site Remediation with Peter Zawislanski.  Peter Zawislanski is Principal Hydrogeologist and Vice President at Terraphase Engineering in Oakland, California. He has over 30 years of experience in site characterization and remediation, and technical expertise in hydrogeology, environmental geochemistry, and soil science. Prior to his career in environmental consulting, he directed a research group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, focusing on metals geochemistry. He holds a BS in Geological Sciences from the University of Illinois, Chicago, and an MS in Geology from the University of California, Berkeley.

The remediation of contaminated sites is a complex, multidisciplinary process. A fundamental requirement is the establishment of cleanup goals, which are typically developed from risk-based concentrations, intended to be protective of human and ecological receptors. However, site cleanup goals cannot be more stringent than background levels of contaminants. Background includes naturally occurring chemicals and industrial legacy contamination. Approaches for developing background concentrations, including data collection and statistical analysis, will be discussed. Several remediation case studies involving the development of background concentrations will be presented.