Mélanie CaronAssistant Director, Colorado Plateau Stable Isotope Laboratory

Published by ecossuser on

Portrait of Melanie Caron
Melanie.Caron@nau.edu

    Caron’s research activities are focused on the influence of biotic and abiotic factors on aquatic food web structure, composition, and behavior of aquatic organisms using stable isotope techniques. Her research interests can be broken down into three different aspects: 1) aquatic food web modeling of abiotic and biotic interactions, 2) stable isotopic techniques and applications to lacustrine and fluvial studies, and 3) method development in stable isotopic techniques for deuterium analysis and the potential use of deuterium in aquatic ecology and river food web modeling.

    Advance training

    Stable Isotope Mass Spectrometer Operator Courses, EA and Mass Spectrometer sections – June 17th-21st, 2013.  Isomass Scientific Training Centre, University of Ottawa, G.G. Hatch Isotope Laboratories, Ottawa, Canada

    Current tasks
    • Manage the day-to-day operations of the prep lab portion of CPSIL
    • Operate the TC/EA-IRMS and the Picarro CRDS for 13C + dD for hydrogen and carbon isotopes
    • Perform data correction, maintenance, method development, and repairs
    • Primary contact for NAU and external clients regarding analyses offered in our laboratory
    Selected Publications and Presentations

    Doucett, R.R., J.C. Marks, D.W. Blinn, M. Caron, and B.A. Hungate. 2007. Measuring terrestrial subsidies to aquatic food webs using stable isotopes of hydrogen. Ecology 88:1587-1592

    Caron, M., R.R. Doucett, J.L. Sabo, and T.A. Kennedy.  2008.  Tracing terrestrial and aquatic organic matter sources in the Colorado River food web using stable isotopes of hydrogen (dD).  6th International Conference on Applications of Stable Isotope Techniques to Ecological Studies, Honolulu, HI.

    Caron, M., R.R. Doucett, J.L Sabo, and T.A. Kennedy.  2008. Longitudinal and seasonal partitioning of trophic linkages in the Colorado River food web using stable hydrogen isotopes (dD). Northern American Benthological Society, Salt Lake City, UT.

    Caron, M., R.R. Doucett and J.L. Sabo. 2007.  Quantifying energy flow to aquatic food webs in the Colorado River using stable isotopes of hydrogen (dD). Northern American Benthological Society, Columbia, SC.

    Categories:

    Related Posts

    A CIRCUIT SHOWS HOW CLIMATE WARMING MAY ALTER DIFFERENT ECOLOGICAL LEGACIES IN THE ARCTIC BOREAL FOREST, WHICH THEN FEEDBACK INTO CLIMATE WARMING AND CHANGES TO LANDSCAPE PROCESSES.

    NAU-led research team receives $9.6M to study how Alaska’s forests change, adapt to warmer future

    Ecological memory stored in a landscape can help an ecosystem recover from disturbances like fire and outbreaks of disease. But what happens when climate warming disrupts that process? How long before ecological memories stored in Read more…

    A SCATTERPLOT DEPICTS HOW MUCH CARBON OR OXYGEN ISOTOPE DIFFERENT SOIL BACTERIA TOOK INTO THEIR DNA (A PROXY FOR GROWTH) DURING A 7-DAY EXPERIMENT. SMALL POINTS REPRESENT THE GROWTH OF INDIVIDUAL BACTERIAL STRAINS LINKED BY LINES TO THE AVERAGE GROWTH OF THEIR CLOSEST IDENTIFIED GENUS. COLORS WERE ASSIGNED BY A CLUSTERING ALGORITHM TO GROUP GENERA INTO FAST-GROWING OR SLOW-GROWING LIFESTYLES.

    Lifestyles of the fast and slow (bacteria): In the wild, most live in the slow lane

    A study led by Northern Arizona University offers new evidence that a common framework to sort bacteria into two lifestyles doesn’t easily apply to bacteria living in wild soil. The findings, published in The ISME Journal, show Read more…

    A trio of illustrated panels depicts the soil microbial communities in three treatments of a long-term warming experiment north of Flagstaff, Arizona. The panels are labeled in gray text, left to right: control, short-term warming, long-term warming. The control treatment, far left, depicts bacteria, protists, and other microorganisms identified by sequencing the soil’s metagenome in yellow, orange, green, and blue, along with chains of available nutrients. Soil depicted in the center panel, which has undergone short-term warming, shows an increased abundance and diversity of microbes, some of which are growing, incorporating nutrients, and respiring carbon dioxide. The soil that has undergone long-term warming, imagined in the panel on the right, shows fewer microbial species and competitive relationships that are developing for control of the scarcer nutrients.

    Does a warmer future favor microbial friend or foe? Ecoss researchers win $3.4M to study interactions in changing soil

    In 2002, the Odyssey probe discovered evidence of past ice on Mars. The U.S. Congress authorized the Iraq War resolution. The Anaheim Angels won the World Series. And in a meadow 15 miles north of Read more…