principal investigator
principal investigator
ORGANIC AND STABLE ISOTOPE
GEOCHEMISTRY LABORATORY
OASIS
The Organic and Stable Isotope Geochemistry Laboratory (OASIS Geochem lab) of the UP Marine Science Institute was established and headed by Dr. Caroline Marie B. Jaraula in January 4, 2016.
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OASIS is currently focused on characterizing persistent organic pollutants; tracking their distribution, behavior, and interactions in coastal systems and how they change across physico-chemical gradients. These pollutants include antibiotics, pesticides, plasticizers, flame retardants, etc.
The lab also does work on finding mangrove, microbe, and mariculture biomarkers and elemental proxies, only to name a few, but generally geochemically characterizing the environment, present and/or past.
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The lab is equipped to isolate, quantify, and identify organic matter and lipids from living organisms, sediments, as well as water and fossil fuel; and serves as research grounds for interested high school, undergraduate, and graduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Persistent Organic Pollutants
Synthetic, unintentionally toxic organic compounds that do not degrade easily in the environment. They accumulate in human and animal tissues, disrupt their natural biological pathways, and potentially cause cancer (Darbre, 2015; Loganathan & Masunaga, 2015).
Biomarkers
(or chemical markers)
Biologically synthesized organic compounds with their original or diagenetically altered definitive structures preserved through geologic time (Simoneit, 2004).
Environmental Forensics
The chemical characterization, historical investigation of releases and transport processes of, and determination of responsibility and proportional liability for contaminants accidentally or deliberately released or emitted into the environment
(Boehm & Murphy, 2015).
Marine Organic Geochemistry
The study of how carbon cycles in the ocean; within organisms, in the water column, in the sediments, from the atmosphere, from land, the influences on and the interactions with one another thereof; in biological, ecological, and geologic timescales (Pantoja & Wakeham, 2000).