Our research group is interdisciplinary in nature, including biologists, chemists and engineers.
Our goal is to document the organization of microbial communities in relation to their physical environment.
We use ecological, biochemical and molecular biology approaches to investigate how bacteria process nutrients and organic matter in ice-covered lakes, glaciers and streams.
Our key focus is the role of bacteria in the global carbon cycle, including metabolism of carbon dioxide, carbon sequestration into biomass and long-term storage of carbon in ice.
Ice cores describe our past and provide clues about our future. Scientists collect an ice core by drilling a long tube into ice, then capping the tube and pulling it up with the ice inside. Continue reading Deep ice cores
If I asked you to draw a glacier, you might draw just a big white blob of ice. But glaciers are really much more complex. To draw them properly, we need to add a lot of details. Continue reading Glacier biofilms
What happens when ponds freeze during the Antarctic winter? We decided to go to the end of the world to find out (and got more than we bargained for)… Continue reading The fulvic acid standard
The global carbon cycle is kind of a big deal. It’s our attempt to describe where all the carbon on Earth is at any given moment. But, our understanding isn’t complete… Continue reading Carbon dynamics