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Event Details:
Please join us Thursday - December 1, 2022 for our Autumn Seminar Series with our guest speaker: PElena Litchma, Ph.D. A special thanks to Professor Tadashi Fukami for bringing this speaker to us for this seminar.
DEPARTMENT OF EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE
SEMINAR SERIES AUTUMN 2022
IN-PERSON EVENT
12:00 - 1:20pm
Thursday, December 1, 2022
Polya Hall - Turing Auditorium (Room 111)
Elena Litchman, Ph.D
Senior Staff Scientist, Carnegie Institution
Department of Global Ecology
** Professor (by courtesy) in the Earth System Science Department at Stanford
Ecological and Evolutionary Responses of Phytoplankton to Global Change and Their Potential for Climate Change Mitigation
Phytoplankton are key primary producers performing half of Earth’s carbon fixation, forming the base of aquatic food webs, and driving major biogeochemical cycles. The global analysis of phytoplankton thermal traits shows that warming may change phytoplankton biodiversity, with tropical regions being especially vulnerable, and that the interactions of temperature with nutrient limitation may exacerbate the negative effects of rising temperatures. I will also show that, although phytoplankton can evolve greater tolerance of high temperatures, widespread nutrient limitation in the ocean may diminish phytoplankton adaptive capacity. I will conclude my talk by discussing the potential of phytoplankton for climate mitigation, focusing on ocean fertilization for CO2 removal.
Bio
Dr. Elena Litchma n is a Senior Staff Scientist in the Department of Global Ecology at Carnegie Institution and a Professor (by courtesy) in the Earth System Science Department at Stanford.
She studies the responses of aquatic ecosystems to changing environments, including anthropogenic global change, and the consequences of those changes for biodiversity, biogeochemical cycles, and ecosystem functioning. She focuses on microbial communities and conducts research in a wide range of systems, from lakes in the US and Siberia to the global ocean and algal biofuel communities. She combines experiments, field studies and mathematical models to address ecological questions of fundamental and applied significance.