As a marine biogeochemist, my interest revolves around the interactions between organisms and their environment, with emphasis on trace metal bioavailability to phytoplankton and redox transformations. I am intrigued by the fact that microorganisms, striving to acquire nutrients and protect themselves from external stressors, actively modify their chemical milieu and in turn influence the biogeochemical cycles of trace and major elements in the ocean. I study fundamental processes and mechanisms by combining field and laboratory measurements and experiments.
Ongoing and future projects:
Dust as a source of iron to Trichodesmium, a globally significant phytoplankton
My research focuses on global climate change and the use of isotope geochemistry to understand climatic and atmospheric processes. I am interested in the parameters and mechanisms that control paleotemperature proxies; in particuler, my group develops and uses the novel proxy carbonate clumped isotopes. We examine biological parameters that affect clumped isotopes and develop its use in new archive materials; we study the effect of non equilibrium processes on clumped isotopes and oxygen isotopes. We apply clumped isotpes to reconstruct paleotemperature and paleo-rainfall in different time periods during the Cenzoic. I am also interested in the use of isotopes to understand the modern carbon cycle and the effect of the biosphere of atmospheric chemistry.
What is clumped isotopes geochemistry?
Analysis of an isotopic composition is a measurement of the relative abundance of a heavy, rare, isotope within a group of molecules. The term ‘clumped isotopes’ refers to the natural abundance of molecules containing two heavy isotopes, such as 13C18O16O, and is a measure of the preference of two heavy isotopes to clump together into a chemical bond. This preference is temperature dependent with the isotopes distributed randomly among all molecules at very high temperatures and are clustered together into a more ordered system at low temperatures.
This results in an isotopic parameter, ∆47, that can record the temperature in which these bonds were formed. ‘Clumped isotopes’ measurements are currently applied for 13C-18O bonds in CO2 molecules that are extracted either from carbonate minerals or from the atmosphere. In carbonates ‘clumped isotopes’ are used to determine the formation temperature of the mineral with most applications associated with reconstruction of past climatic conditions. In atmospheric CO2 it is used as a tracer for partitioning and quantifying the different CO2 sources and sinks of the global carbon cycle.
Climate Change affects the terrestrial biosphere, while changes in the biosphere feedback and affect the climate system. Understanding these complex interactions is important at these times of Global Change.
Related research in our lab track the respiration in soils, and the internal CO2 movement and recycling within forest trees. In addition, we explore the engagement of the Alternative Oxidase in natural ecosystems. These research directions are based on high accuracy measurements of O2 concentrations and stable isotopes.
Other research projects focus on developing the use of oxygen stable isotopes of phosphate for tracking phosphorus in dust and its biogeochemical cycling in soil. This research is based on field work, remote-sensing and lab work. These approaches could help evaluate the effects of changing climate on the terrestrial phosphorus cycle, which is an important limiting factor for plant growth.
Finally, lately we have developed in collaboration with Prof. Amrani, from my institute, an approach to measure the sulfur isotopes of carbonyl sulfide (COS) and used this to determine its isotopic composition in the atmosphere in plant uptake, and in seawater. Our continued research in this field will help to better constrain global scale photosynthesis
Research Interests: The study of soil phosphate and its sources using stable isotopes analysis
Chen Davidson - Phd student
Research interests: Studying sulfur isotopes of Carbonyl Sulfide in the atmosphere and in seawater, to better constrain the terrestrial global photosynthesis
Alie Naor - Msc student:
Research interest: The effect of cellular PO4 uptake on the isotopic signature of extracellular phosphate in macrophytes and aquatic fungi.
Yasmin Avidani - Msc student:
Research interest: Studying the oceanic source of COS and CS2 by sulfur stable isotopes, in aim to improve quantifications of global photosynthesis.
Former Members
Laura Bigio - Former Phd student
Research Interests: Atmospheric phosphate sources (dust, ash and pollen) and their contribution to the global phosphorus cycle.
Boaz Hilman - Former Phd student
Currently: Post Doctoral researcher at Max Planck Institute for biogeochemestry
