Mariah Suzanne Carbone is an American geophysicist who is a professor of

Geoscience Earth science or geoscience includes all fields of natural science related to the planet Earth. This is a branch of science dealing with the physical, chemical, and biological complex constitutions and synergistic linkages of Earth's four spheres ...

s at the Center for ecosystem science and society,

Northern Arizona University Northern Arizona University (NAU) is a public research university based in Flagstaff, Arizona. It was founded in 1899 as the final public university established in the Arizona Territory, 13 years before Arizona was admitted as the 48th state. ...

. She studies

terrestrial ecosystem Terrestrial ecosystems are ecosystems which are found on land. Examples include tundra, taiga, temperate deciduous forest, tropical rain forest, grassland, deserts. Terrestrial ecosystems differ from aquatic ecosystems by the predominant presence ...

s and how they respond to

environmental change Environmental change is a change or disturbance of the environment most often caused by human influences and natural ecological processes. Environmental changes include various factors, such as natural disasters, human interferences, or animal in ...

Early life and education

Carbone was an undergraduate student at

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Epis ...

where she played

women's soccer Women's association football, more commonly known simply as women's football or women's soccer, is a team sport of association football when played by women only. It is played at the women's professional sports, professional level in multiple c ...

for the

Wesleyan Cardinals Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Epis ...

. She moved to the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and pr ...

for doctoral research, supervised by

Susan Trumbore Susan E. Trumbore is an earth systems scientist focusing on the carbon cycle and its effects on climate. She is a director at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry and a Professor of Earth System Science at University of California, Irvi ...

. Her thesis investigated

ecosystem respiration Ecosystem respiration is the sum of all respiration occurring by the living organisms in a specific ecosystem. The two main processes that contribute to ecosystem respiration are photosynthesis and cellular respiration. Photosynthesis uses carbon- ...

and the

residence time The residence time of a fluid parcel is the total time that the parcel has spent inside a control volume (e.g.: a chemical reactor, a lake, a human body). The residence time of a set of parcels is quantified in terms of the frequency distribution ...

of the products of

photosynthesis Photosynthesis is a process used by plants and other organisms to convert light energy into chemical energy that, through cellular respiration, can later be released to fuel the organism's activities. Some of this chemical energy is stored i ...

Research and career

Carbone studies how terrestrial ecosystems respond to environmental change, and how these ecosystems impact the Earth's

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorologic ...

. She makes use of isotope tracers to understand carbon cycling through plants and soils. This allows Carbone to understand how increasing levels of

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide (chemical formula ) is a chemical compound made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature. In the air, carbon dioxide is transpar ...

will influence terrestrial ecosystems. Investigating the fate of carbon in terrestrial ecosystems with temporal and spatial resolution allows Carbone to unravel the molecular mechanisms of different geological processes at local and global scales. She combines

field research Field research, field studies, or fieldwork is the collection of raw data outside a laboratory, library, or workplace setting. The approaches and methods used in field research vary across disciplines. For example, biologists who conduct fie ...

with computational analysis to understand carbon distribution amongst plants, subterranean carbon dioxide

flux Flux describes any effect that appears to pass or travel (whether it actually moves or not) through a surface or substance. Flux is a concept in applied mathematics and vector calculus which has many applications to physics. For transport ph ...

es and the relationships between

carbon Carbon () is a chemical element with the symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalent In chemistry, the valence (US spelling) or valency (British spelling) of an element is the measure of its combining capacity with o ...

and water. To investigate these phenomena, Carbone primarily uses radioactive isotopic tracers (e.g. measurements of

carbon-14 Carbon-14, C-14, or radiocarbon, is a radioactive isotope of carbon with an atomic nucleus containing 6 protons and 8 neutrons. Its presence in organic materials is the basis of the radiocarbon dating method pioneered by Willard Libby and coll ...

, which can be used to characterize the age of carbon) and

accelerator mass spectrometry Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) is a form of mass spectrometry that accelerates ions to extraordinarily high kinetic energies before mass analysis. The special strength of AMS among the mass spectrometric methods is its power to separate a r ...

Carbon in plants

Carbon is formed during

and contributes to growth, metabolism, and above- and below-ground structures. Before the work of Carbone, it was unclear about how plants allocate this carbon. She is also interested in the role of non-structural carbon (i.e. carbon in sugars and lipids). She measures the concentrations of non-structural carbon and uses

bomb pulse The bomb pulse is the sudden increase of carbon-14 (14C) in the Earth's atmosphere due to the hundreds of aboveground nuclear bombs tests that started in 1945 and intensified after 1950 until 1963, when the Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed by th ...

approaches to understand the age of this carbon. Bomb pulse refers to the rapid rise, sharp peak and exponential decline of

Carbon-14 Carbon-14, C-14, or radiocarbon, is a radioactive isotope of carbon with an atomic nucleus containing 6 protons and 8 neutrons. Its presence in organic materials is the basis of the radiocarbon dating method pioneered by Willard Libby and coll ...

that occurred during the 1950s/1960s due to above ground

nuclear weapons testing Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine nuclear weapons' effectiveness, Nuclear weapon yield, yield, and explosive capability. Testing nuclear weapons offers practical information about how the weapons function, how detona ...

. Variations in Carbon-14 can provide information on molecular biosynthesis since 1955. Using this approach, Carbone has studied ancient

redwood tree Sequoioideae, popularly known as redwoods, is a subfamily of coniferous trees within the family Cupressaceae. It includes the largest and tallest trees in the world. Description The three redwood subfamily genera are '' Sequoia'' from co ...

s in

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. Through this work she looks to understand the amount of non-structural carbon in resilience to

wild fire Wildfire is a fire in an area of combustible vegetation that occurs in the countryside or rural areas. Wildfire or Wild Fire may also refer to: People * "Wildfire", Chippewa name of sculptor Edmonia Lewis (c. 1844–1907) Arts, entertainment, a ...

Subterranean carbon dioxide fluxes

To better understand the contributions of above- and below-ground sources to carbon dioxide flux, Carbone develops process-based models. Below-ground, these sources include soil respiration. Until Carbone's work, it was difficult to measure this respiration at high frequencies, or to understand how flux impacts biotic and

abiotic In biology and ecology, abiotic components or abiotic factors are non-living chemical and physical parts of the environment that affect living organisms and the functioning of ecosystems. Abiotic factors and the phenomena associated with them under ...

processes.

Carbon – water relationships

Carbone's research investigates the relationships between

water cycle The water cycle, also known as the hydrologic cycle or the hydrological cycle, is a biogeochemical cycle that describes the continuous movement of water on, above and below the surface of the Earth. The mass of water on Earth remains fairly cons ...

and

carbon cycle The carbon cycle is the biogeochemical cycle by which carbon is exchanged among the biosphere, pedosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and Earth's atmosphere, atmosphere of the Earth. Carbon is the main component of biological compounds as well as ...

Selected publications

* * * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Carbone, Mariah Living people University of California, Irvine alumni Wesleyan University alumni Northern Arizona University faculty American geophysicists 21st-century American scientists Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women scientists Women geophysicists