Job Type
Research
Technical Advice & Consulting
Subject Area
Chemical Oceanography
Physical Oceanography
Activities
Dr. Pedro M Scheel Monteiro is a marine biogeochemistry and oceanography specialist with an interest in the use of models to enhance understanding on the nature of process linkages at the system scale. The special scientific interest is on the importance of scale issues in understanding and forecasting the impacts of remotely sourced drivers on responses in ocean ecosystems. This applies to linking large scale transboundary coastal upwelling systems that are driven by remotely modulated (equatorial or polar) oceanic drivers as well as river basin – coastal systems. The goal is to support understanding of how ecosystems will be modified by global change drivers. The focus of completed research over the past 7 years has been on developing an ecosystem or system scale approach to understanding and, where appropriate predicting, variability in coastal systems physical and biogeochemical characteristics arising from both natural and human drivers. These have included hypoxia variability in the Benguela upwelling system, the link between coastal ecosystem production, fisheries yields and scales of river inputs along the tropical east African coast as well as a number of applied science projects that transferred the benefits of the scientific work into social impact. Much of this work has been undertaken by developing and using numerical models as a basis to holding the required complexity of scales and processes within these large domains. Questions of scale are a strong character of my thinking mainly because they are the key to understanding linkages in large ecosystems in the context of global and climate change.
Region of Study
South East Atlantic Ocean And Southern Ocean
Skills
Biogeochemical Oceanography: (Natural and Anthropogenic)
- Low Oxygen Water variability driven by the coupling of remotely forced and locally generated signals.
- Impacts of land derived organic or nutrient inputs on the marine environment.
- Modelling the biophysical processes which start and maintain phytoplankton new production in upwelling systems
- Modelling of nutrient cycling and oxygen / CO2 dynamics, particularly in upwelling systems.
- Modelling the dynamics of Harmful Algal Blooms
- Tropical mangrove biogeochemistry and production fluxes
Global Climate Change:
- Regional scale carbon flux modelling.
- Carbon source and sink characteristics
- Monitoring long term change in coastal marine systems
