Grant: Canada Research Chairs

Microscopic phytoplankton in the ocean use light energy to drive the uptake of CO2 into organic matter, and thus drive major environmental processes. The Chair in Phytoplankton Ecophysiology will study this phytoplankton photosynthesis interacting with environmental variations, to understand the distributions and activities of major phytoplankton groups. The Chair will use molecular quantitations of key enzymes to understand how different phytoplankton allocate nutrients to cope with environmental fluctuations, with parallel measurements of their physiological performance, to understand how phytoplankton groups compete and grow. The work aims to measure key phytoplankton activities in ways useful to ecologists and environmental modelers.