NEWS

The segment entitled "What does $5,845,254 get a mass spectrometer?" can be listened to here

We are delighted to have led André E. Lalonde AMS facilities next Major Scientific Initiatives proposal. The funding will be used for operation and maintenance of the facility through 2029. PI Walker will act as the Scientific Leader of the facility during this time. It's been a long road, with the proposal originally submitted in Fall 2021 and defended in a 3 day oral session with International AMS experts. What a wonderful result!

So excited for your first contribution of many. The article was recently published in Frontiers in Marine Science. It can be found here: Fox A and Walker BD (2022) Sources and Cycling of Particulate Organic Matter in Baffin Bay: A Multi-Isotope δ13C, δ15N, and Δ14C Approach. Front. Mar. Sci. 9:846025. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2022.846025

Sara's MSc thesis was publshed in Frontiers in Marine Science!
Zeidan S, Walker J, Else BGT, Miller LA, Azetsu-Scott K and Walker BD (2022) Using Radiocarbon Measurements of Dissolved Inorganic Carbon to Determine a Revised Residence Time for Deep Baffin Bay. Front. Mar. Sci. 9:845536. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2022.845536

The paper was led by the esteemed Dr. Ellen Druffel, so wonderful to collaborate on this with you!

Ellen R. M. Druffel, Steven R. Beaupré, Hendrik Grotheer, *Christian B. Lewis, Ann P. McNichol, Gesine Mollenhauer and Brett D. Walker. (2022) Marine Organic Carbon and Radiocarbon – Present and Future Challenges. Radiocarbon, 1-17. doi:10.1017/RDC.2021.105.

Congratulations to MSc Zeidan on your defense and best of luck starting your new job at Health Canada! It has been a pleasure working with you and you will be sorely missed in the Walker Lab. It was wonderful to get the team together in person for the first time to celebrate properly (with cake) on Saturday.

We were honored to participate in the WHOI/OCB dissolved inorganic carbon workshop this week. The focus on the event was to get the marine carbon isotope community together to communicate state of the art methods and to work towards developing community reference materials (CRMs) for standardizing DIC 13C and 14C measurements.

The André E. Lalonde AMS lab recieved its Mini Carbon Dating System (MICADAS) today. The Walker Lab can't wait to measure it's ultra-small samples in-house!

MSc students Kayla, Liam and Aislinn successfully completed a 4 week cruise in the Canadian Arctic, sampling all major carbon reservoirs for isotopic and chemical characterization. This was part of our NSERC funded shiptime application: Radiocarbon Distributions and Carbon Cycling between Baffin Bay and the Beaufort Sea (RadCARBBS).

It's been a long road getting the new A4F system purchased and installed in the Walker Lab. We look forward to using this new tool to better constrain the size-age-composition and reactivity continuums of marine organic matter.

The Druffel Lab's DO14C work from the GO-SHIP P18 cruise was recently published in Geophysical Research Letters ! What a wonderful cruise this was; spanning >100° latitude from San Diego to Antarctica with a pit stop in Easter Island... wow. Find the full article here.

2021 is going to be awesome. We are excited to welcome 2 new and 2 veteran researchers into our group for undergraduate and graduate study.

Congratulations to Honors BSc students Kayla McKee and Aislinn Fox for completing their degrees and submitting excellent honors BSc theses.

Kayla's thesis work explored the molecular composition of total dissolved organic matter in Baffin Bay using a novel proton (1H) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy water suppression method. Aislinn's thesis work looked at sources and cycling of particulate organic carbon in Baffin Bay using Δ14C and δ13C.

We are thrilled that both Kayla and Aislinn will stay a little longer in our group for new MSc projects studying carbon cycling in the Canadian Arctic!

We are thrilled to be a part of a team exploring the impact of diverse bacterial and archeal metabolic pathways impacting the cycling of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) within the Chilean anoxic marine zone. Some of this work was recently published in Nature Communications! Find the full article here.

Our group will be presenting two research projects highlighting the novel biogeochemical cycles of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and dissolved organic matter (DOM) in Baffin Bay. What is the 14C-age of deep water in Baffin Bay? What is the molecular composition of DOM in this region? Tune in Tuesday to see presentations by students Zeidan and McKee to find out!

Congratulations to Dr. Taylor Broek on his recently published article in Global Biogeochemical Cycles: "Low Molecular Weight Dissolved Organic Carbon: Aging, Compositional Changes, and Selective Utilization During Global Ocean Circulation". His work focused on directly isolating both large and small molecules for chemical and isotopic characterization, and provides evidence for these two pools of molecules having different compositions, isotopic properties, and cycling during deep ocean circulation. The article was also featured in EOS as a Research Spotlight. Keep up the good work Dr. T!

It's not everyday you get to beat your photochemical UV reactor blank down to 0.7µM L-1. However, it is far more of an accomplishment to be nominated to the National Academy of Sciences! Congratulations Ellen!!! We are so proud of you and can't even begin to tell you how much you have impacted the lives of so many students, postdocs and early career scientists. You are an amazing advisor, mentor and friend. The Academy is lucky to have you! Thank you for giving us all something to celebrate in the COVID-era.

Please check out UC Irvine's press release here.

Ok, it has been one heck of an April! Our group's recent Discovery Grant proposal "Advanced Radiocarbon Dating and Molecular-Level Tools for Evaluating Marine Carbon Cycling in the Canadian Arctic" was awarded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). The award includes an 'Accelerator' and Early Career supplement. The success of this award will launch our Arctic carbon cycle research program over the next 5 years and officially cements our NSERC Ship time funding for a research cruise aboard the CCGS Amundsen icebreaker this Fall.

Know any students looking for Arctic research opportunities ??? Please have them contact us !

Congratulations to MSc student Sara Zeidan on her successful NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship to elucidate the mysteries of carbon cycling in deep Baffin Bay. Sara was previously awarded the Ontario Graduate Student Fellowship in 2019. The group is so proud of you Sara, you RO14CK !

Congratulations to lead PI Dr. Nagissa Mahmoudi (McGill) and Co-applicant Dr. Jolle Pelletier (Université de Montréal) on our successful New Frontiers in Research Fund – Exploration proposal "Resolving microbial carbon transformations in a warming world". This work will allow us to gain key insights into the roles marine microbes and extracellular enzymes play in the marine carbon cycle. Another special congratulations to Dr. Joelle Pelletier for her success in recent COVID-19 funding !