The Decade Collaborative Centre for Coastal Resilience (DCC-CR) is pleased to host a hybrid seminar featuring Professor Daniel H. Rothman, Professor of Geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and member of the Lorenz Center in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.
The seminar, titled “Kinetic Organization of Marine Microbial Respiration,” will explore the fundamental role of microbes in the marine carbon cycle. Microbial respiration is responsible for the conversion to CO₂ of nearly all marine organic carbon beneath the photic zone, making microbial activity a key process in understanding how carbon is transformed and stored in the ocean.
During the seminar, Prof. Rothman will present a theoretical framework showing how respiration rates and microbial abundances in the water column and marine sediments can be quantitatively predicted. The theory examines how fluctuations in microbial metabolic capacity can overcome barriers to organic carbon degradation, providing new insights into the organization of microbial respiration in marine environments.
Speaker
Daniel H. Rothman
Lorenz Center
Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Abstract
Microbes are responsible for the respiration, or conversion to CO₂, of nearly all marine organic carbon beneath the photic zone. Prof. Rothman will show that respiration rates and microbial abundances in the water column and sediments are quantitatively predicted by a theory in which fluctuations in microbial metabolic capacity overcome barriers to organic carbon degradation.
Biography
Daniel H. Rothman is Professor of Geophysics at MIT. His current research draws on statistical and nonlinear physics to understand the organization of the natural world, with particular attention to the global carbon cycle.
He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), the American Geophysical Union (AGU), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and received the 2016 Levi L. Conant Prize from the American Mathematical Society.
Moderator
Prof. Lorenzo Mentaschi, University of Bologna
The seminar will be held in person at Aula Magna DIFA in Bologna and will also be available online.
