Hi everyone! My name is Nichole and I am a rising senior majoring in Computational Biology and minoring in Hispanic Studies. This summer, I am a research intern at Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of San Diego. I am specifically working within the California Current Ecosystem Long Term Ecological Research (CCE-LTER) site, an NSF-funded group studying the impacts of climate change and variability on the California Current pelagic ecosystem.
During my internship, I will be researching the relationship between the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires and the proliferation of harmful algal blooms (HABs) in SoCal in the months that followed. HABs happen when growth stimulating conditions allow for algae to proliferate, often producing toxins and impacting the chemical balance of the water column. Wildfire smoke often contains limiting nutrients that act as fertilizer for phytoplankton, so I am using satellite proxies to understand the smoke’s interactions with the ocean surface, and thus, phytoplankton species. I am specifically using Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) and black carbon products, which provide 2D and 3D depictions of how the wildfire smoke moved over L.A., and out into the ocean. Apart from my computational work, I will also be running laboratory experiments analyzing what ash types best stimulate the growth of various phytoplankton species found during the spring HAB.
During these upcoming weeks, I will be getting trained on how to handle phytoplankton samples from a 75 year-old archive preserved by California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI). I will also be working on isolating the ash deposited into these water samples by sorting, measuring and photographing the particles. This allows us to analyze the chemical composition of the ash, which can provide context to what biologically limiting nutrients were introduced to the ocean during the wildfires. In tandem with my lab work, I will continue characterizing the wildfire smoke pattern by integrating climate models and satellite chlorophyll data (as a proxy for phytoplankton biomass) into my analysis.
