The Penn BiCycles Lab would like to extend a warm welcome to Dr. Łukasz Stachnik, who is joining us for three months as a Visiting Scholar. Some details on the projects he’ll be working on while at Penn can be found below. It’s great to have you in Philly for a bit Łukasz!
Projects
The RAW and the ConGas projects look to investigate climate warming inducted changes in biogeochemical cycles across glacierised basins in polar and temperate regions. The RAW project focuses on carbon cycling and linked biogeochemical cycles associated with glacier recession from tidewater to land-based systems in the High Arctic (Svalbard). Physical and chemical processes associated with both types of glaciers enhance atmospheric CO2 consumption by mobilizing nutrients which stimulate primary production. Existing studies are mainly limited to ice sheets (e.g., Greenland), suggesting that freshwater discharge from tidewater glaciers to coastal environment will cause upwelling of macronutrient-rich deep marine waters. Alternatively, glacier erosion underneath both types of glaciers likely supply polar environments with large amounts of sediment-bound and highly bioavailable elements (e.g., Fe, P, Si, N) could stimulate biological growth in Arctic aquatic environments (e.g., stream, lakes, coast, fjords). It is poorly known how processes occurring during recession from tidewater to land-based glacier in polar regions (RAW project), and biogeochemical processes in lakes formed after deglaciation in Arctic and Alps (the ConGas project) will affect biogeochemical cycles in the future. In the RAW and the ConGas projects, we will use a multidisciplinary approach (including ecology, genetics, sedimentology, biogeochemistry, hydrography, and geochemistry) to investigate such processes. At the Penn BiCycle Lab, Łukasz will perform extraction of sediment-bound nutrients from suspended sediments (Si, P, Fe) samples collected from glacier-fed fjord, rivers and lakes, and analyse fresh and marine water samples for dissolved micronutrients by the QQQ-ICP-MS. We will also work on plans for the recently awarded FLOURISH project (Łukasz Stachnik as a PI), which is part of a collaboration between University of Wrocław and Penn.
FLOURISH (2022 – 2025)
Łukasz’s Role: Principal Investigator
Funding: 899K PLN, ~180K USD from National Science Centre in Poland (SONATA 17)
Purpose: Investigate the consequences of glacier changes on downstream nutrient supply and carbon metabolism”
RAW (Retreat And Wither; 2021 – 2024)
Łukasz’s Role: Research Collaborator (micronutrients biogeochemistry)
Funding: 1.344M EUR, ~1.311M USD from National Science Centre in Poland (GRIEG 1, Polish-Norwegian)
Purpose: What is the influence of glaciers recession from tidewater to land-based on the marine biological production and biogeochemistry in the Arctic
ConGas (2021 – 2025)
Łukasz’s Role: Research Collaborator (hydrochemistry)
Funding: 1.242M PLN, c.a. 250K USD from National Science Centre in Poland (OPUS LAP, Polish-Swiss)
Purpose: Ecosystem connectivity effects on the metabolism and greenhouse gas flux in warming Arctic and Alpine lakes
