Paul del Giorgio

Dr. Paul del Giorgio visited us for some days to give some lectures in the Master of Oceanography. He also delighted us with a very nice talk about the carbon fluxes in freshwater ecosystems. He is currently working on respiration, one of the largest gaps in our understanding of the global carbon cycling in both the aquatic and terrestrial environments. He was embarked on an international collaborative effort to synthesize and analyze the existing information and data on aquatic respiration, which resulted in a book published by Oxford University Press.

Dr. del Giorgio

This project allowed to estimate for the first time global aquatic respiration budget, and also helped to identify gaps in our current understanding of this key aspect of global metabolism. Among the most critical gaps they found were the lack of adequate quantification of the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of aquatic respiration, in oceans, estuaries and lakes; the weak understanding of the links between aquatic respiration, carbon cycling and climate and landscape change; and the almost complete lack of insight into how microbial and planktonic diversity and composition influence aquatic ecosystem metabolism, and how diversity may modulate the response of aquatic systems to changes in organic loading, nutrient enrichment and climate.

Ted Packard, Paul del Giorgio and Javier Arístegui. If you add to this photograph Peter Williams and, perhaps, Tom Ikeda, you will need some oxygen to respire.