The Geoscience Colloquium is hosted each Friday by the Department of Earth and Environmental Science.
John Paul Balmonte, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Lehigh University. He is the PI of the Microbial Ecology and Biogeochemistry Lab.
The Balmonte Lab investigates questions at the intersection of microbial ecology, biogeochemistry, and environmental change in marine and other aquatic systems. They employ experimental and field-based approaches, and bioinformatic, molecular, and analytical chemistry tools to understand feedbacks between environmental parameters, microbial structure and their roles in carbon cycling—specifically the initial enzymatic step of organic matter degradation—and the quality and quantity of elemental pools.
The Lab’s specific aims include the following:
- quantify rates of microbial enzyme-catalyzed degradation of organic matter along physicochemical gradients (e.g., hydrostatic pressure, temperature, salinity, nutrients, etc.) from surface to deep ocean waters;
- understand the extent to which biotic interactions, specifically those between viruses and their bacterial hosts, influence microbial metabolism and biogeochemical cycles in aquatic environments; and
- determine the sensitivity of microbial structure and their carbon degrading activities in response to environmental perturbations.