Research Mission
The mission of the Schutte Research Group is to generate knowledge that is required to plan for future global change. Our primary research goal is to predict how climate change and other human disturbances alter the efficiency of the nitrogen removal and carbon burial ecosystem services that aquatic environments provide. We address this goal by seeking answers to three central research questions (described in more detail below):
1. What is the fate of nitrate in aquatic environments?
2. How do aquatic methane cycling and climate change interact?
3. How does human disturbance influence aquatic biogeochemistry?
In answering these questions, we provide valuable insights for natural resource managers and policy makers that will help to maintain, protect, and restore aquatic ecosystems and the services that they provide.
Research Themes
Bacterial mat on the seafloor viewed from DSV Alvin
What is the fate of nitrate in aquatic environments?
In many ways, nitrate is the gatekeeper of the aquatic nitrogen cycle. It is the substrate required by the microorganisms that carry out denitrification and convert bioavailable nitrogen into inert dinitrogen gas, removing it from the biosphere. But nitrate can also be converted into ammonium by a competing process (dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium (DNRA)) or taken up and stored or assimilated by a whole suite of organisms. All these other processes retain nitrogen within the ecosystem. We aim to determine the environmental controls on how nitrate is distributed between these competing processes. When is denitrification dominant and when is it inconsequential? Understanding this tradeoff will assist decision-makers in effectively managing coastal and marine ecosystems to maximize the nitrogen removal ecosystem service that they provide.
LUXURY SPA
After 5 minutes of coastal fieldwork...
How do aquatic methane cycling and climate change interact?
While coastal and marine sediments are important sites of carbon burial, microbial processes in these sediments convert some of that buried carbon into methane. Some of that methane can escape back into the atmosphere, where it is 45 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. We research the pathways by which this methane is transported and released to the atmosphere as well as the microbial processes that consume methane along the way, preventing its release. Our goal is to understand how methane production, consumption, and transport are likely to change in response to global change.
Gas flux measurements in a salt marsh mesocosm
How does human disturbance influence aquatic biogeochemistry?
The microorganisms that mediate most biogeochemical processes in aquatic ecosystems are sensitive to human-caused disturbances. Our goal is to understand and predict how these disturbances alter the nitrogen removal and carbon burial ecosystem services provided by the microbial processes that are hosted within coastal and marine sediments. We investigate a wide range of disturbances, from oil spills to restoration practices such as thin layer placement of dredged material.