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Melissa S. Schwab

Photo of Melissa Schwab

Address:

4800 Oak Grove Drive

M/S 233-300

Pasadena, CA 91109

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Curriculum Vitae:

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Member of:

Carbon Cycle And Ecosystems

Employed By

A NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) Fellow is not an employee of any office or agency. The fellow has a guest appointment at JPL. ORAU currently administers the appointment.

Biography

I am a highly self-motivated and enthusiastic scientist with an expertise in sedimentary, inorganic, and organic geochemistry. I combine established and novel approaches to gain a deeper understanding of biogeochemical cycles and their influence on atmospheric CO2 concentrations. My research focuses on the deconvolution of riverine and marine organic carbon export, residence times, and climatic factors regulating organic carbon cycling.

Education

  • Doctor of Science | Biogeochemistry | ETH Zurich | Switzerland | 2020
  • Master of Science | Earth Sciences | ETH Zurich | Switzerland | 2015
  • Bachelor of Science | Earth Sciences | Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg | Germany | 2013

Professional Experience

  • NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow | Jet Propulsion Laboratory | 2021 - present

Research Interests

  • Riverine export of organic carbon from continental reservoirs to the ocean
  • Understanding exchange processes between particulate, dissolved, and gaseous organic carbon pools
  • Monitoring changes in carbon cycling in response to climate warming
  • Tracking the fate of organic carbon in the pedosphere and hydrosphere using compound-specific biomarker analyses
  • Bridging the gap between local and regional carbon cycles using ground truthing and imaging spectroscopy
  • Provenance analysis using radiogenic geochemistry (Nd, Sr)
  • Radiocarbon dating (bulk, compound-specific)
  • Geospatial modeling and machine learning frameworks

Selected Awards

  • NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellowship (2020)

Selected Publications

  1. Schwab, M. S., Gies, H., Freymond, C. V., Lupker, M., Haghipour, N., & Eglinton, T. I. (2022). Environmental and hydrologic controls on sediment and organic carbon export from a subalpine catchment: insights from a time-series. Biogeosciences, In Press.
  2. Schwab, M. S., Hilton, R. G., Haghipour, N., Baronas, J. J., & Eglinton, T. I. (2022). Vegetal undercurrents - Obscured riverine dynamics of plant debris. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 127(3).
  3. Schwab, M. S., Rickli, J. D., Macdonald, R. W., Harvey, H. R., Haghipour, N., & Eglinton, T. I. (2021). Detrital neodymium and (radio)carbon as complementary sedimentary bedfellows? The Western Arctic Ocean as a testbed. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 315, 101-126.
  4. Eglinton, T. I., Galy, V. V., Hemingway, J. D., Feng, X., Bao, H., Blattmann, T. M., Dickens, A. F., Gies, H., Giosan, L., Haghipour, N., Hou, P., Lupker, M., McIntyre, C. P., Montluçon, D. B., Peucker-Ehrenbrink, B., Ponton, C., Schefuß, E., Schwab, M. S., Voss, B. M., Wacker, L., Wu, Y., & Zhao, M. (2021). Climate control on terrestrial biospheric carbon turnover. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(8).
  5. Schwab, M. S., Hilton, R. G., Raymond, P. A., Haghipour, N., Amos, E., Tank, S. E., Holmes, R. M., Tipper, E. T., & Eglinton, T. I. (2020). An Abrupt Aging of Dissolved Organic Carbon in Large Arctic Rivers. Geophysical Research Letters, 47, e2020GL088823.

Projects

ABoVE (Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment )