Oceanography

My oceanographic interests include biogeochemical analysis of hypersaline environments including isotopic analysis of methane gas emissions from these aquatic environments. I have worked in hypersaline environments from San Fransisco bay to the Baja California Peninsula.

As a graduate student in the Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences department at Florida State University my research focused on using stable isotopic analysis to analyze methane gas produced in microbial mats found in hypersaline environments. The analysis showed that the microbial mats found in hypersaline environments produced methane with an isotopic composition outside of values typically accepted for biologically produced methane. Higher salinity endoevaporites yielded what would be considered nonbiogenic methane based upon stable isotopic and alkane content, however incubation of crustal and algal mat samples resulted in methane production with similar isotopic values. Radiocarbon analysis indicated that the production of the methane was from recently fixed carbon.

This research is important because methane in the atmosphere is used as a potential marker for current or recent life on exoplanets. While the presence of methane in the atmosphere could also be a consequence of geologic activity and/or thermal alteration of ancient organic matter it could also be from microbial life similar to those found in hypersaline environments here on Earth. From our findings, we proposed an extension of the isotopic boundaries utilized for the determination of biogenic methane to avoid the possibility of misclassifying methane produced by these unique microbes.