USD Magazine Spring 2008

AROUND THE PARK

TANGLED UP IN BLUE I c e b e r g s t u d i e s c o u l d h a v e g l o b a l wa r m i n g i mp l i c a t i o n s [ h o t t o p i c ]

isms interact with their ecosystems. His focus in the iceberg research is on Antarctic krill that are“really, really important ecologically.” “In terms of the project we’re doing, they are major processors of food. So they eat a lot, and they are eaten a lot. They defecate a lot, so they are processing material.” Kaufmann is enthusiastic about Antarctica, where he’s been going for research projects for 15 years. “Antarctica is a really, really amazing place,” he says. “Imagine a world where there is no red, there’s no orange, there’s no yel- low. And everything is in shades of black, white, gray, blue and green. But the spectrum of black, white, gray, blue and green is just much more diverse than you’d ever get in this kind of environ- ment. So there are shades of blue that you never, ever, ever see here — ice blues and things like that.” And he’s passionate about the organisms he’s been studying for decades, which live in“very dark, very cold, very high-pressure” places.“I was interested in deep-sea animals and how they managed to make a living in this really— tome —sort of strange environment.” Animals that toil away on the sea floor trying to eat and not be eaten might not sound riveting, but in Kaufmann’s office there are amazing keepsakes like spindly glass rods made by actu- al sponges deep in the sea. And his enthusiasm could charm any- one into wanting to spend time on a ship in the Antarctic looking for shy ocean creatures.

RON KAUFMANN

T here’s more to icebergs than meets the eye. Everybody knows that. But a team of scientists, which includes a USD professor, is delving into the rich development of life that icebergs attract in their wake and the role they may play in climate change. The team’s research, first pub- lished in Science in July 2007, revealed the areas around ice- bergs as teeming with life. As the giant floating structures melt, they essentially fertilize the ocean, says Ron Kaufmann, associate professor of Marine Science and Environmental Studies, releasing material into the water that fuels by Kelly Knufken

might be pulled from the atmos- phere as a result of an iceberg’s presence. All the organisms living around the iceberg will inevitably convert carbon from the atmosphere into fecal matter, which falls to the ocean floor. Antarctic this May and June to begin measuring this effect. It’s an important question, as carbon dioxide accumulation is a hot topic of global warming. Kaufmann, who has always taken USD students on his Antarctic research trips, comes to the work by way of his interest in how organ- Kaufmann and his fellow scientists will travel to the

more growth of algae, which attracts more and more animals. “So they’re not just passive objects floating around,” Kauf- mann says. “They’re actually changing the chemistry of the area that they’re moving through. Of course, if you change the chemistry, you have the potential to change the biology, and as a biologist I’m particularly interest- ed in that.” Indeed, Kaufmann has his own research paper stemming from the project forthcoming. The initial research paved the way for a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation to measure how much carbon

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