Presidential Faculty Fellows Program

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ABSTRACT The receipient has been chosen for a National Science Foundation Presidential Faculty Fellow Award. The receipient will continue his research in the transport of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur through Arctic tundra ecosystems to include both physical and geochemichal transport mechanisms and pathways. These studies will lead to a better understanding of broad environmental problems such as acid rain, eutrophication, species introductions, and climate change. The research will lead to a predictative capability for ecosystem function to show how organisms react to each other and to human-imposed change. Fundamental questions about geochemical cycling within organisms at both the regional and global scales will be examined. A novel technique involving the use of stable isotopes will be applied at the scale of entire ecosystems and will be used to estimate the current carbon balance in arctic ecosystems. Determination of the processes controlling the current carbon balance will allow the principal investigator to predict the changes that may occur during forecasted climate change in the arctic.