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, United States. Founded in 1899, it was the third and final university established in the Arizona Territory. It is one of the three universities gove ...

. She studies

terrestrial ecosystem Terrestrial ecosystems are ecosystems that 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 presen ...

s and how they respond to

environmental change Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, referring respectively to all living and non-living things occurring naturally and the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism ...

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, United States. It was founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the Methodi ...

where she played

women's soccer Women's association football, more commonly known as women's football or women's soccer, is the team sport of association football played by women. It is played at the professional level in multiple countries, and about 200 national teams partic ...

for the

Wesleyan Cardinals Wesleyan University ( ) is a private liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1831 as a men's college under the Methodist Episcopal Church and with the support of prominent residents of Middletown. ...

. She moved to the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Irvine, California, United States. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, U ...

for doctoral research, supervised by Susan Trumbore. 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 distribu ...

of the products of

photosynthesis Photosynthesis ( ) is a system of biological processes by which photosynthetic organisms, such as most plants, algae, and cyanobacteria, convert light energy, typically from sunlight, into the chemical energy necessary to fuel their metabo ...

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 a region, 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 meteoro ...

. 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 is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalent bond, covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in a gas state at room temperature and at norma ...

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 fi ...

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 in physics. For transport phe ...

es and the relationships between

carbon Carbon () is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalence, tetravalent—meaning that its atoms are able to form up to four covalent bonds due to its valence shell exhibiting 4 ...

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

carbon-14 Carbon-14, C-14, C or radiocarbon, is a radioactive isotope of carbon with an atomic nucleus containing 6 protons and 8 neutrons. Its presence in organic matter 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 different methods of mass spectrometry is its ability t ...

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 (C) in Earth's atmosphere due to the hundreds of above-ground nuclear tests that started in 1945 and intensified after 1950 until 1963, when the Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed by the United S ...

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, C or radiocarbon, is a radioactive isotope of carbon with an atomic nucleus containing 6 protons and 8 neutrons. Its presence in organic matter 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 the performance of nuclear weapons and the effects of Nuclear explosion, their explosion. Nuclear testing is a sensitive political issue. Governments have often performed tests to si ...

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

redwood tree Sequoioideae, commonly referred to as redwoods, is a subfamily of Pinophyta, coniferous trees within the family (biology), family Cupressaceae, that range in the Northern Hemisphere, northern hemisphere. It includes the List of superlative tree ...

s in

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

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

wild fire A wildfire, forest fire, or a bushfire is an unplanned and uncontrolled fire in an area of combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identified as a bushfire ( in Australia), desert ...

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 und ...

processes.

Carbon – water relationships

Carbone's research investigates the relationships between

water cycle The water cycle (or hydrologic cycle or hydrological cycle) is a biogeochemical cycle that involves the continuous movement of water on, above and below the surface of the Earth across different reservoirs. The mass of water on Earth remains fai ...

and

carbon cycle The carbon cycle is a part of the biogeochemical cycle where carbon is exchanged among the biosphere, pedosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere of Earth. Other major biogeochemical cycles include the nitrogen cycle and the water cycl ...

Selected publications

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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 American women geophysicists