Remote Sensing of Ocean Biogeochemical Processes
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Remote sensing of land-ocean interfaces in our Lab combines techniques for studying both the terrestrial and aquatic domains of coastal margin ecosystems, and understanding land-ocean-atmosphere interactions and exchanges. Some of this work is conducted as part of future satellite mission preparation efforts for informing measurement requirements and optimal remote sensing design of future NASA sensors, including PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) and SBG (Surface Biology and Geology), and mitigating risks while maximizing the return of NASA satellite missions.
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Wetland Ecosystems and Global Change
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Tidal marshes are among the most ecologically valuable and economically important ecosystems on Earth, but also especially vulnerable to human pressures and climate change. These rich in biodiversity and highly productive ecosystems are known "hot spots" of biogeochemical exchanges, large reservoirs of soil organic matter, and important sources of dissolved organic matter (DOM) to estuaries and coastal oceans. However, there is presently very little understood about the biotic and abiotic processes in these large carbon reservoirs (marsh soils) that regulate the quantity and quality of DOM exported to estuaries, and ultimately the processing of DOM in the estuarine water column. Research in our Lab integrates field measurements with advanced remote sensing observations and new mechanistic carbon cycling modeling to address key research hypotheses that are critical for understanding the role of marsh soils and tidal wetland-estuary margins as buffers, reactors, and transformers of dissolved organic carbon and nitrogen.
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Land Ocean Interactions in the Arctic
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The Arctic is warming fast, twice as fast as the average temperature rise on the rest of the planet. Its ice is melting, its permafrost is thawing, its ocean is acidifying. Freshwater input extends longer and includes new sources, such as upwelling, permafrost thaw, and sea ice cycling, allowing seasonal biological activity to prolong. Change is expected to continue and intensify in the future, with increasingly profound implications for human health and safety, industries, economies, and ecosystems across the globe. Work in our Lab combines satellite and field observations with coupled physical-biogeochemical models to improve understanding and prediction of land-ocean interactions in the coastal Arctic, and assess vulnerability, response, feedbacks and resilience of Arctic coastal ecosystems to current and future pressures.
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Atmosphere - Ocean Exchanges and Interactions
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With increasing coastal urbanization, the atmosphere has become an important source of excess nutrients and pollutants to many terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, worldwide, particularly in coastal margins. Urban nearshore regions are characterized by strong variability in atmospheric composition, associated with both anthropogenic emissions and meteorological processes, such as sea- and bay-breeze circulations, that influence the circulation and accumulation of atmospheric pollutants at the land-ocean interface. A major focus in the Tzortziou Lab is studying these highly dynamic and complex atmospheric processes across the land-ocean interface using an integrative approach that combines satellite imagery, aircraft observations, and model calculations with comprehensive in-situ and remote-sensing shipboard measurements.
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