By Stephy Mahoney | Reporter
A pair of Baylor geosciences professors and their peers are working on projects funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation.
Assistant professor of geosciences Dr. James Fulton said that his team’s project is being worked on with undergraduates and graduate professors to better understand how the earth works and how to better use American soil for the good of the country.
According to Fulton, his project is specifically tied to the Gulf of Mexico. They are learning how rising sea levels impact the coastal storage of carbon and sediments.
“There is a whole lot of carbon that gets stored in the bays — for example, the Galveston and Corpus Christi bays,” Fulton said. “One of the questions we have is if sea level is rising — and it is rising pretty fast — how will that change the way carbon gets stored in these coastal bays?”
Fulton said the team is involved in numerous forms of data collection. They participate in DNA extracting, sequencing and analyzing lipid profiles of sediments. Fulton stated it’s a neat opportunity because just as humans get bloodwork done to have their lipids studied, they can now do the same with sediment, gaining a deeper understanding of how they move and work.
According to Fulton, his team is on a projected three-year timeline, after which they will present their findings.
Assistant professor of geosciences Dr. Elizabeth Petsios is working on a different project. Petsios said she considers herself a geobiologist and paleontologist as she works mostly with animals and organisms.
Petsios’ project involves the biomechanical function of animal anatomy as it relates to how they feed themselves. This also includes how they expand into new niches, or roles in the ecosystem, over time.
“The model organism we are using is sea urchins,” Petsios said.
According to Petsios, the reasoning behind this is that sea urchins have a jaw and teeth, yet nobody has researched and explored their function. The typical animals researched are vertebrae animals such as dinosaurs.
Fulton said projects like these are a great way to interact across disciplines.
“It can be helpful for students who might be on a pre-med track to become a doctor,” he said. “We can also give them these tools in biology to help answer questions they might have.”