Fresh Perspective on Environmental Puzzles
Gathering information is never easy for an environmental scientist, but it gets harder when monkeys are throwing, uh, stuff at you.
“I was setting up an experiment in the rain forest in Costa Rica. I looked up and saw all these really cute monkeys,” recalled Tibisay Perez, professor at the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research in Caracas. “I guess they were angry, because they all started throwing monkey poop at me!”
Years later, she’s still laughing about it. She also knows that, while the monkeys might not have appreciated her at the time, her research was good for them and for humanity, too.
Perez, who is at Rice to continue her study of global warming as an International Visiting Fellow in Energy, the Environment and Sustainability, is the first of four researchers who will work here this year and next. The visiting fellows program, part of Rice’s Energy and Environmental Systems Institute, encourages close collaboration with international professors and fulfills a goal of Rice’s Vision for the Second Century by building relationships with research institutions beyond our shores.
Perez’s specialty is collecting and analyzing data on the emission of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, and she’s done so in rain forests and on farms in South and Central America — areas that are underrepresented in current studies of greenhouse gases and climate.
Perez is a longtime colleague of Rice Assistant Professor of Earth Science Carrie Masiello, whom she met while both were earning their doctorates at the University of California at Irvine. Perez expects their work to lead to a better understanding of how to control the atmospheric release of nitrous oxide — which is 300 times as powerful a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide — by adjusting the methods farmers use to fertilize crops.
Nitrous oxide is emitted when bacteria digest nitrogen from broken-down plant matter or from fertilizer that has not been consumed by crops. Perez and Masiello are looking for ways to properly fertilize corn, switchgrass and sugar cane — all major sources of biofuel — for maximum growth and minimal damage to the environment.
“Worldwide, the nitrogen-applied fertilizer plant uptake is about 30 percent,” said Perez. “The other 70 percent is lost by leaching, runoff and soil emission of nitrogenous gases, such as nitrous oxide, produced by microorganisms that feed off that fertilizer.” Finding ways of minimizing that enormous fertilizer loss by adding microorganism inhibitors or charcoal could save money and cut emissions, a win-win mitigation strategy Perez hopes will take root among farmers.
The issue becomes more important as developing nations ramp up agricultural production to ensure the security of their food supply and for the possible expansion of biofuel crops. “We want to determine the net global warming potential due to biofuel production in the tropics over long-term scales to evaluate if it is environmentally sustainable,” Perez said.
Masiello, who is seeking funding to continue the visiting fellows program beyond 2009, applauded the fresh perspective Perez and the others bring to Rice and the issues at hand. “Scientists in the developing world have expertise we need,” she said. “As we think about building a sustainable future, we need to partner with them.”Learn more:
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