The semester has passed, and AGU approacheth

The semester has literally flown by for MAD EGG Lab this fall as we have gotten ourselves settled into the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Minnesota. Most of our time has been spent working on manuscripts and grant proposals.

Successes this fall include two manuscripts accepted for publication (one with Professor Beth Herndon at Kent State on Fayetteville Green Lake sediments, the other a student-led paper by Caleb Schuler (now a grad student at U of Tennessee) with Professor Trinity Hamilton on hot spring stromatolites at Yellowstone National Park. We also have three manuscripts currently out for review (one on hydrothermal systems in YNP, one from our glacial systems work, and one on our cyanobacterial bloom impacted sites in Ohio and Lake Erie). We also have nine manuscripts in varying states of completion in the hopper for this winter and spring...YIKES!

We have an ambitious grant submission schedule ahead of us as well. Currently we have a NASA Exobiology proposal submitted (collaborating with Professor Andy Czaja and Andrew Gangidine at the University of Cincinnati). In the works we have a NSF Low Temp Geochemistry proposal we are working with Prof. Hamilton on to do Yellowstone Research, a NASA Solar System Workings proposal we are working with Dr. Allie Rutledge on (also a Yellowstone-centric project), and we are part of a DOE proposal led by Prof. Hamilton focusing on snow algae work in the Pacific Northwest. We are also batting around ideas of NSF proposals with some other collaborators to push on other projects, so hopefully we can find the time to get those written and submitted this spring as well!

We will be at AGU in December, giving a talk and helping chair a session (both on Tuesday), so if you are there, I hope we see you!

SEM image of a silica sinter deposit from an extinct hot spring. The upper space was likely a bubble, with a thick microbial mat at the bubble-mat interface and more spread out filaments interior to the bubble.

Hydrothermal area biofilms imaged under a microscope in Professor Andy Czaja's lab at UC. The purple pigment is a 'microbial sunscreen' created by the algae to protect themselves from UV radiation.