Ryan R. Rykaczewski |
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Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Princeton University 300 Forrestal Rd Princeton, NJ, USA 08544 Phone: +1-609-258-1311 E-mail: ryanrr (at) princeton.edu In collaboration with the Nereus Program, GFDL Climate and Ecosystems, Jorge Sarmiento, Charlie Stock, and John Dunne CV: pdf |
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Research Interests
I am interested in exploring the responses of ecosystem and fisheries production to past and future climate variability and climate change. This research involves consideration of theory, observations, and models. Currently, I investigate the biogeochemical implications of changes in physical climate that are particularly robust in the projections of atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (e.g., meridional shifts in zonal winds, increases in ocean stratification, and changes in phenology). In the past, changes in primary production, carbon export, the structure of food webs, and fisheries have often correlated with simple physical climate measures such as SST. However, these relationships rarely reflect an understanding of the actual mechanisms relating the environment to the physics. My recent research questions whether reliance on past correlations is appropriate for prediction of future conditions; the empirical relationships between biological and physical processes may differ as the earth system is perturbed in a manner not observed over the past century.
Key areas of interest:
- mechanisms of fisheries-climate interactions
- atmospheric forcing of marine biogeochemistry (e.g., oxygen, pH, nutrient cycling) and ecosystems
- size spectra of phytoplankton and zooplankton communties; size-structured interactions
- large-scale and long-term changes to marine environments
- nonlinear relationships between physics and ecosystems
- dynamics of upwelling systems, eastern boundary currents, and small pelagic fish populations
- ecology of marine zooplankton; mediation of trophic transfers (physics-chemistry-phytoplankton-zooplankton-fish)
Education
| 2009 |
Ph.D. | Oceanography | Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. La Jolla, CA. Advisor: Dr. David M. Checkley, Jr. |
| 2002 |
B.S. |
Marine Science and Biology (with Chemistry minor) | University of Miami. Coral Gables, FL. Advisor: Dr. Donald B. Olson. |
Selected Publications
Rykaczewski, RR and JP Dunne. 2011. A measured look at ocean chlorophyll trends. Nature 472:E5-E6, doi:10.1038/nature09952. Copy, Link, and Discussion. [A comment arising from DG Boyce et al. Nature 466:591-296 (2010)].Sydeman, WJ, SA Thompson, JC Field, WT Peterson, RW Tanasichuk, HJ Freeland, SJ Bograd, and RR Rykaczewski. 2011. Does positioning of the North Pacific Current affect downstream ecosystem productivity? Geophys. Res. Lett. 38:L12606, doi:10.1029/2011GL047212. Copy. Link. Highlight.
Decima, M, MR Landry, and RR Rykaczewski. 2011. Broad-scale patterns in mesozooplankton biomass and grazing in the eastern equatorial Pacific. Deep-Sea Res. II 58:387-399, doi:10.1016/j.dsr2.2010.08.006. Link.
Rykaczewski, RR and DM Checkley. 2008. Influence of ocean winds on the pelagic ecosystem in upwelling regions. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 105:1965-1970. Link.
Rykaczewski, RR. 2002. A food-web population model for three mid‐Atlantic fish species. Undergraduate Honors Thesis. University of Miami. Coral Gables, FL, USA.
