September 9, 2005 Source: Mount Allison University:
http://www.mta.ca/news/?id=798 65 million years in the making - a closer look at climate change SACKVILLE, NB - With global warming heating things up, the study of climate change has recently become a hot topic. Dr. Zoe Finkel is no stranger to this field. She spends her days studying phytoplankton, microscopic organisms most of us have never heard of but are essential to our existence. Marine phytoplankton are responsible for producing oxygen on earth and play a very important role in the carbon cycle and climate change. Dr. Finkel is continuing her research on the carbon cycle at Mount Allison University as the newly appointed co-ordinator of the environmental science program, an interdisciplinary program that allows students to take a diverse set of courses and participate in environmental research. Dr. Finkel will be teaching senior-level classes as well as overseeing the Marine Macroecology and Biogeochemistry Lab (MMaB Lab) with Dr. Andrew Irwin, a member of the mathematics and computer science faculty at Mount A. She is excited to be conducting her research in Sackville. "I'm happy to be able to continue this research with the faculty support and equipment provided at Mount Allison. One of the main questions challenging environmental scientists is to understand how increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations will change climate. The ocean is one of the most important reservoirs of inorganic carbon, and its ability to act as a long-term sink for CO2 is affected by phytoplankton (microscopic organisms that live in the ocean) through the flux of photosynthetically fixed carbon, termed the `biological pump.' The magnitude and efficiency of the pump are among the most important and least understood components in climate research. Climatically driven shifts in taxonomic and size structure of phytoplankton communities have the potential to cause climatic feedbacks." Mount Allison's dean of science, Dr. Margaret Beattie says "I am very pleased to welcome Zoe Finkel to Mount Allison University, as our first faculty member in environmental science. In this capacity she will be interacting with students and researchers in biology, chemistry, geography, and mathematics as well as with students enrolled in our environmental science major. She brings to our university exceptional external funding and an ambitious research and teaching program. We are fortunate to have attracted her here." This spring Dr. Finkel received several grants from Science and Engineering Research Canada (NSERC) for her research project entitled: "Evolution of fossil phytoplankton communities over the last 65 million years of Earth's history: understanding the past to predict future climate change." She is the recipient of a prestigious University Faculty Award, which is valued at $120,000 over three years and a NSERC Discovery Grant valued at $22,500 each year for five years. Dr. Finkel also received an Equipment Grant from NSERC for almost $97,000 to purchase technology for her research in the MMaB Lab, making her one of Mount A's most successful applicants with NSERC this year. With these funds Mount Allison will be purchasing a light microscope with differential interference contrast and digital camera; a multisizer III coulter counter; and a fluorescence induction and relaxation system, which helps measure photosynthetic rates and the health of photosynthetic organisms. Dr. Finkel's work was recently published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. The paper is called "Climatically driven macroevolutionary patterns in the size of marine diatoms over the Cenozoic" and the abstract is available online at http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/102/25/8927 -30- For more information please contact Dr. Zoe Finkel, tel: 364-2536 (zfinkel@mta.ca) or visit the MMaB Lab web site at http://mathcs.mta.ca/faculty/irwin-www/MMaB/
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