Schweppe Lecture Series

Dr. Robert C. Rhew
Assistant Professor, Geography Department
University of California at Berkeley

Thursday, April 27, 2006, 7:00 PM, Visitors Center Auditorium

"Where the Land, Sea and Sky Meet: Trace Gases in Coastal Ecosystems"

Coastal zones represent the interface between the land and ocean, including continental shelves, estuaries and bays, and terrestrial shoreline ecosystems. The coastal zone is characterized by strongly coupled interactions – geological, chemical, and biological -- between the land and ocean. The atmosphere serves as an important pathway for matter and energy exchange in the coastal zone. In this presentation, Dr. Rhew will discuss the role of two particular types of coastal environments, salt marshes and coastal tundra, as sources and sinks of environmentally important trace gases like carbon dioxide and methane.

Dr. Robert Rhew received his Ph.D. in Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 2001. He was awarded a NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship, and joined the faculty of the Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2003. His work on trace gases addresses problems in climate change, atmospheric pollution, and ozone depletion. This work involves laboratory and field-based measurements in different terrestrial ecosystems, such as coastal salt marsh, chaparral, desert, Arctic tundra, boreal forest, grassland, and temperate forest. His research seeks to identify natural terrestrial sources and sinks of important trace gases, to quantify their exchanges to and from the atmosphere, and to determine the environmental and biological controls on those exchanges. He also focuses on innovations in measurement technology and analytical design that enable more precise and accurate analysis of gases at parts-per-trillion concentration levels, opening up a wealth of research opportunities to study their biogeochemical cycles.

The free lecture will be held at 7:00 p.m. in the Visitors Center of The University of Texas Marine Science Institute in Port Aransas, and the public is invited to attend. Dr. Rhew's visit to the Marine Science Institute is part of the Laura Randall Schweppe Endowed Lecture Series in Marine Science.