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Phytoplankton bloom near Alaska’s Pribilof Islands on September 22, 2014. The Pribilofs are surrounded by nutrient-rich waters in the Bering Sea. The milky green and light blue shading of the water indicates the presence of vast populations of microscopic phytoplankton—mostly coccolithophores, which have chalky calcite scales. Such phytoplankton form the foundation of a tremendously productive habitat for fish and birds. Caption by Kasha Patel and Mike Carlowicz.
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Satellite chorophyll offshore New Zealand (source: NASA Aqua MODIS).
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Satellite surface chlorophyll spiraling around eddies in the Gulf of Alaska. Phytoplankton blooms in response to the iron supply by melt water along the coast and transport offshore by eddies. Source: NASA Suomi NPP-VIIRS acquired on June 9th 2016.
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Satellite chorophyll in the Indian Ocean (source: NASA Aqua MODIS). Eddies and filaments promotes the growth of phytoplankton during the winter monsoon by supplying nutrients and relieving light limitation (Resplandy et al., 2009).
Professor Laure Resplandy is a biogeochemical oceanographer. Her research goals are to understand how climate and ocean physics influence marine biogeochemistry and ecosystems and how these changes can in turn impact the Earth climate. Prof. Resplandy's approach is to design and develop numerical models (from ocean regions to global climate system) and statistical tools to interpret in-situ and satellite observations.
RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
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Climate change and global carbon cycle.
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Changes in ocean oxygenation, oxygen minimum zones and coastal hypoxia.
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Influence of ocean physics on ecosystems and biogeochemical fluxes.
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Climate modeling, ocean modeling from small-scale (1-100 km) to large-scale.
IN THE NEWS
Graduate student Mathieu Poupon presented his research on the feasibility and governance of marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) at the prestigious One Ocean Science Congress in Nice, France. His talk, followed by a high-level…
The Department of Geosciences and Princeton University congratulates Dr. Sam Ditkovsky on successfully defending his Ph.D. thesis: “The fate and impacts of oxygen minimum zones in a changing ocean" on Thursday, June 5th, 2025.