In the Baines lab, we study the abiotic and ecological factors that control the flow of elements through marine and freshwater foodwebs. These questions have wide ranging implications for sustainability of living resources, the management of contaminants and modeling how changes to living ecosystems may affect the global carbon cycles and climate. In the past, I have published widely on the fate of organic matter produced by phytoplankton, the uptake and transfer of selenium and heavy metals in aquatic food chains and regional controls on dynamics of phytoplankton biomass and water quality in lakes.

My work often looks to cross traditional disciplinary barriers that sometimes obscure interesting patterns. In particular I am interested in comparing marine and freshwater systems, linking community structure and dynamics to biogeochemical process and integrating across microscopic and regional scales. I have employed a broad range of approaches ranging from laboratory experiments to detailed field process and microsopic studies to broadscale comparative analyses among ecosystems. Sometimes we even go to synchrotrons.

My colleagues and I am currently studying variation in elemental composition of bacteria, protozoa and algae and its influence on biogeochemical cycles in the ocean. This work employs cutting edge technology that allows us to measure and map the elemental composition of individual cells. Eventually, this workshed some light on how physiological responses to the environment and changes in community composition combine to influence the cycles of nutrients in aquatic ecosystems.

Another project concerns how dissolved organic matter (DOM) can act as a direct energetic subsidy to aquatic consumer organisms. Such subsidies can have large implications for interactions between consumers and their prey. We have so far shown that natural DOM can be used by the invasive zebra mussel. By preventing these organisms from starving in the face of low food resources, this subsidy has allowed the zebra mussel to permanently reduce algal biomass in the Hudson River by > 80%.

I have students who are also engaged in research on nitrogen cycling in wetlands and Fe limitation of crustacean zooplankton in the ocean.