This June 12th, at 12:00 p.m., the CEAB-CSIC Auditorium will host the seminar “Shedding light on the aquatic nitrogen puzzle: Photochemical Production of Nitrous Oxide.”
The seminar will be led by Dr. Elizabeth León Palmero, a research associate in the Department of Geosciences at Princeton University (USA).
The researcher is an expert in the chemical and microbial processes that regulate the production and consumption of nitrous oxide (N₂O₃). Her research focuses particularly on the role of sunlight in the abiotic formation of N₂O₃ in surface waters. Before joining the Princeton team, she worked with Carolin Löscher in the NordCee group at the University of Southern Denmark, studying N₂O₃ dynamics in the Baltic Sea and Greenland. He obtained his PhD from the University of Granada under the supervision of Isabel Reche and Rafael Morales-Baquero, where he explored the fluxes of CO₂, CH₄, and N₂O₃ in freshwater reservoirs. His doctoral work was recognized with the Best Doctoral Thesis award from the Iberian Association of Limnology, and he subsequently received third prize for Best European Thesis in Limnology from the European Federation of Freshwater Sciences.
In this talk, León Palmero will present the recent discovery of a new photochemical pathway—photochemodenitrification—that drives the production of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O) in both fresh and marine surface waters, and which may represent a significant global source of N2O emissions.
The CEAB-CSIC seminars are aimed at researchers, primarily from the Center itself, but also from other organizations. The objective is to bring knowledge on specific topics to researchers from other fields, promoting transversality in research.
