Please
join
us
for
our
first
Ecohydrology
seminar
of
2022
from
1-2
PM
in
EIT
1015.
Dr.
Lewis
Alcott,
a
Hutchinson
Environmental
Postdoctoral
Fellow
at
Yale
University,
will
be
giving
a
talk
titled:
Phosphorus
and
climate
through
time
and
sampling
uncertainties
in
the
past
and
present.
The evolution of Earth’s atmosphere and oceans through time had profound consequences for the biosphere. Biological or tectonic revolutions have been proposed to explain large changes, but the principal drivers remain unclear. The role of phosphorus in these events is also poorly constrained. Here we show, using a theoretical model and geochemical data, that the behaviour of phosphorus played a major role in regulating Earth’s oxygen trajectory. The model also supports a major role for climate in nutrient delivery to the global oceans and that methane likely played a large role. To attempt to address the uncertainties in the past methane cycle, the present methane cycle was investigated using an expert elicitation survey, highlighting the need for a more quantitative method to estimate spatial uncertainty of geochemical data, which is also presented here.