Biography
My academic department page
How do I incorporate sustainability into the courses I teach?
I teach the following courses: ERTH 121: Earth System Science, ERTH 347: Earth's Climate: Past, Present, and Future, and ERTH 374: Biogeochemistry
How does my research advance sustainability?
Today anthropogenic greenhouse-gas driven climate warming is changing our oceans. As the climate heats up, the oceans warm, acidify, and lose oxygen. Marine scientists study these changes and use climate models to predict future impacts. However, the response of marine ecosystems to anthropogenic warming is incompletely understood. How will rapid climate and ocean chemistry changes impact marine biodiversity? One way geoscientists address this question is to examine the relationships between climate, biodiversity, and ocean chemistry during the “Big Five” mass extinctions because all of them are associated with rapid climate changes.
In the Meyer lab, we are interested in the biogeochemical processes that lead to ocean anoxia and in identifying intervals of anoxia/euxinia (anoxic and sulfidic conditions) in Earth’s history. Much of our work centers around the end-Permian mass extinction and modern environments we think are similar to end-Permian ocean conditions. Our current projects include: 1.) using Earth system models to examine the impact of climate warming on ocean life and anoxia during the end-Permian and Early Triassic, and 2.) refining interpretations of sulfur isotopes in the rock record through study of modern processes in sulfidic Fayetteville Green Lake (New York).