Ocean acidification (OA) due to rapidly increasing anthropogenic CO2 emissions represents a widespread threat to marine calcifiers. This topic was a primary focus of my doctoral work with Dr. Gretchen Hofmann at UCSB and is ongoing through collaborative efforts with other researchers. Through my doctoral research, I applied an interdisciplinary approach to examine how climate change-driven processes, such as OA, impact marine invertebrate larvae living in coastal regions. This was accomplished using two distinct approaches: (1) oceanographic observations of pH variation and water mass properties to identify ecosystem-specific patterns of natural variation and (2) organismal-level culturing experiments to test the thresholds of physiological response in larvae to altered seawater chemistry.
Co-locating sensors with biology
Ocean acidification impacts on larval sea urchins