Steven Emerson
Faculty | Oceanography
I approach research, teaching, and graduate student advising with a “chemical perspective” of oceanography in which the distributions of chemical concentrations and isotope ratios are used to understand biogeochemical processes and the role of the ocean in the global fluxes of oxygen, carbon and nitrogen. As the science of oceanography becomes more interdisciplinary, we seek to understand how chemical tracers can be used to determine rates of physical, biological, and geological oceanographic processes that are not possible to constrain otherwise. My main research interests over the past decade have involved using distributions of N2, O2, Ar, and the noble gases to constrain net biological fluxes of metabolites in the euphotic zone of the upper ocean, mixing processes deeper in the thermocline, and denitrification in the deep sea. We study the ocean by both traditional sampling from ships and remotely using a variety of in situ sensors on moorings, profiling floats, and gliders.