{"id":60212,"date":"2012-06-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-06-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-senior-studies-mangroves-in-puerto-rico-to-gain-insights-into-carbon-cycle\/"},"modified":"2012-06-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-06-26T00:00:00","slug":"uri-senior-studies-mangroves-in-puerto-rico-to-gain-insights-into-carbon-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2012\/06\/uri-senior-studies-mangroves-in-puerto-rico-to-gain-insights-into-carbon-cycle\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 senior studies mangroves in Puerto Rico to gain insights into carbon cycle"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tBallston Spa, N.Y., resident aims for career as marine ecologist<\/p>\n


\n\tKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 June 26, 2012 \u2013 Ryann Rossi always knew she wanted to be a marine biologist, ever since she proclaimed that sharks were her favorite animal at age 3. Now that the 溏心vlog免费B站 senior is getting her hands wet in the mangroves of Puerto Rico, she is even more convinced of her career ambitions.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI started working on this mangrove project last summer, and I fell in love with the ecosystem. I absolutely love it,\u201d said Rossi just days before returning to Puerto Rico to continue her research. \u201cWe don\u2019t have anything like it up here. There\u2019s just so much going on in mangroves.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tA native of Ballston Spa, N.Y., Rossi is collaborating with 溏心vlog免费B站 graduate student Brita Jessen on a nutrient enrichment experiment to assess how the mangrove ecosystem will fair with increased run-off from agriculture or urban environments.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cWe want to make a flow chart of how carbon moves through this ecosystem, which is important for understanding climate change,\u201d she said. \u201cMangroves sequester a lot of carbon by outputting it into tree biomass.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tTo see how carbon sequestration may change under varying environmental conditions, Rossi and Jessen set up nine test plots on a mangrove cay in the Jobos Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve on the south coast of Puerto Rico. Since last summer, nutrients representative of urban and agricultural waste have been added biweekly to some of the plots. Then they collected leaves that fell from the mangrove trees to study their decomposition rate, measured tree growth, tracked algae blooms, and tested the chemistry of the water in the peat soil where the mangroves grow.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cWe\u2019ve even tied in some of the invertebrates that live in the mangroves,\u201d Rossi explained. \u201cThere\u2019s carbon in the leaf litter, and the crabs drag it down into their burrows, so we count the burrows and track how much leaf litter gets carried down them so we can see where the carbon is going.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tThe researchers are just half way through their two-year experiment, and while they have collected a great deal of data, they still have to process the data before they can draw any conclusions. <\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI have learned so much from this research,\u201d said Rossi, \u201cespecially about field techniques and lab techniques that will be so important for my future career.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tRossi\u2019s research has been supported by the 溏心vlog免费B站 Coastal Fellows program, the Rhode Island EPSCoR Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship and by grants from the 溏心vlog免费B站 Undergraduate Research Initiative and the Stan Cobb Marine Biology Fund Undergraduate Research Award.<\/p>\n


\n\tA member of the 溏心vlog免费B站 Student Senate who teaches swim lessons in the campus pool, Rossi is looking forward to one more semester of classes before graduating in December. She then plans to enroll in graduate school with the goal of working as a marine ecologist.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI love working in the field, where I get to enjoy nature and figure things out about nature, like why that crab is digging a burrow and how it affects everything else,\u201d Rossi said. \u201cEverything is connected, and I think that\u2019s really neat.\u201d<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ballston Spa, N.Y., resident aims for career as marine ecologist KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 June 26, 2012 \u2013 Ryann Rossi always knew she wanted to be a marine biologist, ever since she proclaimed that sharks were her favorite animal at age 3. Now that the 溏心vlog免费B站 senior is getting her hands wet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60214,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}