Earlier this month I was in Morehead City at the UNC Institute of Marine Sciences for the kick-off meeting for our project on cyanobacteria in Lake Taihu (see my September 2012 post). It was a very productive visit. From a modeler’s perspective this project is exciting because it includes a lot of relevant and exciting observations not commonly available (e.g., ammonia regeneration, nifH gene expression, 14/15N isotope tracing, etc.). These will be a challenge to integrate in the model, but that is the fun part. It is also exciting to work on such an important problem, affecting the drinking water of millions of people. Here is a picture (from Paerl et al., 2011):
This project will keep us busy for a while!
Besides that, chairing a faculty search and teaching two classes is keeping me pretty busy this semester...
Best regards,
Ferdi
