Ph.D. Student
Department of Ocean Sciences

kstremle@ucsc.edu

Research interests: paleoclimatology, anthropogenic climate change, isotope geochemistry, coral ecology.

Biography
Born in Florida, I was raised in rural Iowa, with an ever-present love for the ocean. I attended the University of Miami for my undergraduate studies, where I double majored in Marine Science and Biology. Along the way, I developed a deep interest in earth processes, and I picked up minors in Chemistry and Geology. My interests were further diversified through three years of research in the Close Marine Organic and Isotope Geochemistry lab, where I was first introduced to isotopes as an ecological and climatological tool. My undergraduate thesis work focused on a chemosymbiotic mussel from cold methane seeps, where I developed the first temporal isotope record for this species and habitat. During my summers, I enjoyed working for the Iowa State Parks service through public outreach and water management. I am pursuing my PhD, beginning in 2021, through the co-mentorship of Dr. Adina Paytan at UCSC and Dr. Nancy Prouty at the US Geological Survey.

Research
My PhD research will expand upon the isotope investigation I began as an undergraduate, and apply my skills to new study areas. Through our partnership with the USGS, I will develop a number of projects with isotope geochemistry as the foundation. The first will focus on isotopic analysis of fish otoliths from the Gulf of Mexico, with the goal of characterizing shifts in diet and habitat over lifetime. The otolith, or inner ear bone, develops sequentially as the animal ages, and can identify nursery sources for GOM fish like the red snapper. These fish are of particular importance from a fisheries standpoint, and their use of coral ecosystems over lifetime may contribute to future management considerations.

Additional projects focusing on coral ecology will use corals cores to develop the records of coral growth and determine environmental controls on coral growth and erosion. These cores too serve as a temporal record of coral health, which can help predict the future of these ecosystems as factors such as nutrient offloading continue to change.