Kevin Rose, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute – What We Don’t Know About Climate Change

There’s still much to learn about climate change.

Kevin Rose, assistant professor of biological sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, looks into how organic matter can keep temperatures on the rise.

Dr. Kevin Rose received his Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology from Miami University studying the causes and consequences of variation in ultraviolet radiation in aquatic ecosystems. Following his Ph.D., Dr. Rose went on to a postdoctoral fellowship at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellowship at the U.S. National Science Foundation, and a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Rose joined at the Department of Biological Sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2015 as the Frederic R. Kolleck ’52 Career Development Chair in Freshwater Ecology. Dr. Rose’s research spans aquatic ecology and biogeochemistry to understand how natural and anthropogenic processes affect the structure and function of freshwater ecosystems. A goal of his lab group is to forecast the future state of lake ecosystems in a regional to global context, with an emphasis on understanding how freshwater ecosystems are changing in response to local to global changes in land use and climate. This interdisciplinary research draws on skills in biology, ecology, biogeochemistry, advanced environmental sensors, and computational modeling.

What We Don’t Know About Climate Change

Many people know that planting a tree is a great way to fight climate change. Trees and other plants pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and turn it into living organic matter. But when leaves and branches fall to the ground, where does all that organic matter end up? Some of it gets washed into streams, rivers, lakes, and ponds, where dissolved organic carbon gives water a brownish hue, just as tea leaves do when dipped in a mug of hot water. 

Eventually, most of the carbon entering aquatic ecosystems breaks down, often by bacteria and the sun’s ultraviolet rays. Aquatic ecosystems act like chimneys, venting CO2 from the landscape back to the atmosphere. Lakes and rivers also act as the circulatory system for carbon on our planet, regulating the flow of carbon around the continents and to the oceans.

So, what will happen to this circulatory system as temperatures climb? Data and theory tell us more CO2 is emitted when water warms. This has the potential to trigger a feedback loop in which increased warming leads to greater CO2 release, higher atmospheric CO2, and thus further warming.

Will this positive feedback cycle be important enough to alter carbon cycling in aquatic ecosystems or the Earth’s climate? Ecologists are trying to figure this out. With support from the National Science Foundation, we are using data and computer models to simulate how thousands of lake temperatures and carbon processes are responding to climate change. Our early findings indicate that how lakes respond to climate change depends on both future air temperatures, as well as characteristics of individual lakes, like how deep or clear they are.

Our lakes and rivers will probably look quite different in 50 to 100 years. But we can do something about it. We can all do our part to protect our planet – it can be as simple as planting a tree.