About Us

Human societies and earth systems are in constant co-evolution, while anthropogenic impacts on the environment can be both intensified and dampened by natural feedback loops. Our collaborative team seeks to establish a baseline understanding of how ecosystems function naturally and predict the influence of disturbances and human activities on hydrological, biogeochemical, and ecological processes on global, regional, and local scales.

Research

Current Projects

COMPASS-FME

The Coastal Observations, Mechanisms, and Predictions Across Systems and Scales - Field Measurements and Experiments project aims to understand how interactions among water, soils, sediments, and plants drive carbon and nutrient fluxes and transformations across the coastal interface

Methane Venting from Forearc Faults in the Puget Sound Estuary

This project seeks to quantify how subsurface methane seeps contribute to greenhouse gas emissions from the Puget Sound estuary to the atmosphere.

Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal

This project will deploy a novel ocean alkalinity elevation system to demonstrate its ability to mitigate both global CO2-driven climate change and regional impacts of ocean acidification.

TROCAS

This project seeks to unravel the sequence of processes and sources of terrestrially-derived organic matter that culminate in the immense carbon dioxide outgassing to the atmosphere from tropical rivers worldwide.

Tree Methane

This project explores the mechanisms of a recently discovered phenomenon - the emission of methane and other greenhouse gases from trees. We use a range of field and laboratory techniques to understand, and ultimately predict the magnitude and drivers of tree methane emissions in upland and wetland forests near the coast.

Sensor Development

We develop new approaches for deploying sensors in air, water, soil, and plants and test novel technologies for sensing environmental processes.

Featured Publications

Biogeochemical changes in estuaries

The biogeochemical composition of materials suspended and dissolved in estuarine waters is substantially transformed by biological and …

Ward, N.D., Bianchi, T.S., Osburn, C.L., Myers-Pigg, A.

DOI

The black carbon cycle and its role in the Earth system

Black carbon (BC) is produced by incomplete combustion of biomass by wildfires and burning of fossil fuels. BC is environmentally …

Coppola, A.I., Wagner, S., Lennartz, S.T., Seidel, M., Ward, N.D., Dittmar, T., Santin, C., Jones, M.

DOI

The black carbon cycle and its role in the Earth system

Processes and mechanisms of coastal woody-plant mortality

Observations of woody plant mortality in coastal ecosystems are globally widespread, but the overarching processes and underlying …

McDowell, N.G., Ball, M., Bond-Lamberty, B., Kirwan, M.L., Krauss, K., Megonigal, J.P., Mencuccini, M., Ward, N.D., Weintraub, M., Bailey, V.

DOI

Processes and mechanisms of coastal woody-plant mortality

Representing the function and sensitivity of coastal interfaces in Earth System Models

Between the land and ocean, diverse coastal ecosystems transform, store, and transport material. Across these interfaces, the dynamic …

Ward, N.D., Megonigal, J.P., Bond-Lamberty, B., Bailey, V., Butman, D., Canuel, E.A., Diefenderfer, H., Ganju, N.K., Goñi, M.A., Graham, E.B., Hopkinson, C.S., Khangaonkar, T., Langley, J.A., McDowell, N.G., Myers-Pigg, A.N., Neumann, R.B., Osburn, C.L.,, Price, R.M., Rowland, J., Sengupta, A., Simard, M., Thornton, P.E., Tzortziou, M., Vargas, R., Wesienhorn, P.B., Windham-Myers, L.

DOI