Finding keys to climate resilience in coastal ocean dynamics
Kristen Davis seeks to understand how physical processes in the ocean shape coastal ecosystems and support climate resilience.
As told to Katie Jewett
I grew up in Tampa, Florida, where I learned how to drive a boat before I could drive a car. I learned to read waves and currents, and found a community of people who loved being on the water.
At first, I wanted to become an engineer because it seemed practical. Then, as part of an undergraduate class in systems ecology, I volunteered to help my professor with fieldwork. I found myself back on a boat, taking samples as the sun rose over an estuary. From then on, I knew I wanted to study ocean science.
I earned my PhD at Stanford in Civil and Environmental Engineering and trained as a scientific diver at Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove. Now, to be able to come back and build a lab in the Oceans Department is a dream come true.
As a physical oceanographer, I think a lot about how physical processes shape coastal ecosystems and what that means for climate resilience. I love designing modeling tools and field experiments to collect data, and then pulling the story out of those data to understand what’s going on.
Some of my recent work focuses on the end life of internal waves in the ocean, which can form anywhere water separates into layers due to differences in density.
Internal waves are among the most important mechanisms for bringing cold, deep water up to the ocean surface. This replenishes nutrients for marine photosynthesizers like plankton, which in turn suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
My research has taken me to the South China Sea, where internal waves over 100 meters in amplitude travel 500 kilometers until they break on Dongsha Atoll. The corals on Dongsha are some of Earth’s fastest growing corals. We think that internal waves play a role in that because they replenish the nutrients corals need to survive.
When internal waves break, the water can cool within minutes, so Dongsha corals have evolved to tolerate very rapid temperature swings. Our work has shown that corals that live in places where they commonly experience big temperature swings are more resilient to small temperature increases. This makes the Dongsha corals and others like them important for restoring reefs that are now facing temperature increases because of climate change.
Closer to home, I’m part of a team that’s investigating the technical and economic feasibility of kelp farming in offshore environments in Santa Barbara. Kelp is being considered for solutions ranging from renewable biofuels to food security to carbon sequestration. I’m focused on modeling kelp’s potential to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and buffer against ocean acidification. I’m excited to support the growth of the Oceans Department because I think we need more scientists who understand the fundamentals of how the ocean works and can engage in the challenge of assessing strategies for using the ocean as a potential solution to climate change.
Explore More
-
"I remember daycare trips to coastal parks, and for most of my childhood I fell asleep at night to a sound machine playing the sound of breaking waves. My parents are geologists who really enjoy nature, so we spent a lot of time outdoors. Most families have family portraits hanging on the walls, but we had vials of sand samples clustered along ours."
-
Ching-Yao Lai combines her passion for physics with climate science to better understand Earth’s polar ice sheets and how they contribute to climate change.
-
Yuan Wang seeks to understand how particle pollution from vehicles, industry, and wildfires affects our future climate and extreme weather events like hurricanes.
