Biogeochemical signals of climate change in tropical streams and temperate coastal wetlands

April 10, 2023 in Seminar

Marcelo Ardón, Associate Professor, Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, North Carolina State University 

Join us for the live stream April 12th, 11:45am EST: https://youtube.com/live/Uhq_1gTv-2s?feature=share

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ABSTRACT

Water is life, and aquatic ecosystems are the core of the ecological infrastructure that regulate water quantity and quality. However, aquatic ecosystems are being impaired due to land use change, altered precipitation regimes, increasing temperatures, and sea level rise. In our lab group, we have been studying long-term changes in tropical streams in Costa Rica and coastal wetlands in North Carolina. In Costa Rica, we have seen changes in extreme precipitation events, which have consequences for acidification, nutrient export, and carbon processing. In North Carolina, both droughts and storms have led to saltwater intrusion, which can lead to ecosystem transitions. Beyond documenting declines, we seek to understand mechanisms of change to help inform restoration and mitigation strategies. In this talk, I will share some of the lessons we have learned as we combine long-term monitoring, field and lab experiments, remote sensing, citizen science, and syntheses in an effort to forecast and adapt to the synergistic and non-linear effects of an uncertain future.

BIO 

Dr. Marcelo Ardón is an Associate Professor at the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at North Carolina State University. His research centers on ecosystem ecology, wetland and stream biogeochemistry, the impacts of land use and climate change on the movement of water, carbon, and nutrients, and restoration strategies. His research lab aims to explain the mechanisms underlying ecosystem response to human accelerated environmental change to develop forecasts and adaptation strategies. Ardón received a B.A. in Biology and Environmental Science from Gettysburg College, a Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of Georgia and completed a postdoctoral position at Duke University in Biogeochemistry. 

POSTCARD