Collaborative Research: Isotopic and Compositional Investigation of the Sources and Interactions of Reactive Nitrogen in the Marine Atmosphere at Bermuda

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This project is designed to characterize the sources, composition, and interrelationships among nitrogen (N) species in rainwater and aerosols deposited into the North Atlantic Ocean. The island of Bermuda will be used for sampling due to its location in the western North Atlantic, its history as a key sampling location for studies of the marine atmosphere, and the fact that seasonal changes in transport allow for study of both anthropogenically and primarily marine influenced air masses. The intellectual merit of this project includes contribution to a fundamental understanding of the sources and composition of inorganic and organic N in the marine atmosphere. Results from this work will also have implications for diagnosing how much new, bioavailable N is entering the marine biogeochemical system. Estimates today suggest that atmospheric deposition can account for approximately a third of the ocean's external N supply. However, deposition fluxes to the ocean have typically been interpreted simply as N inputs, whereas recent work suggests that the ocean may influence and even contribute to the reactive N cycle found in the overlying atmosphere. This work aims to clarify both the natural and human-impacted atmospheric N cycle and its links to the ocean.Broader impacts include the education and training of undergraduates in the classroom, laboratory and field; training and career development of a graduate level research technician; the education, training and development of a post-doctoral researcher; contribution to the development of the research program of an early career scientist; and dissemination of results within the scientific community, as well as to a broader audience. The work will be highly collaborative and interdisciplinary, involving groups at Brown University, Princeton University and the Bermuda Institute for Ocean Sciences (BIOS). A Princeton undergraduate will participate in field and laboratory work, as part of the Princeton-BIOS summer internship program. A research technician will be dedicated to the project and based at BIOS for 18 months. A post-doctoral scholar will spend time at all three collaborating institutions and will coordinate the research of the undergraduate and a Brown graduate student. The results of the research will be disseminated at scientific conferences and through peer-reviewed publications. This research and its implications will be shared with a broader audience through three specific efforts: a public lecture in Bermuda, a presentation to K-12 teachers as part of Brown's NSF supported GK-12 program, and development of a module to be taught as part of an undergraduate environmental studies course at Brown entitled "Analysis and Resolution of Environmental Problems."