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Spatial Sciences Institute

William M. Berelson

Paxson H. Offield Professor in Coastal and Marine Systems and Professor of Earth Sciences, Environmental Studies and Spatial Sciences
Email berelson@usc.edu Office ZHS 227 Office Phone 213.740.5828

Profile

William M. Berelson’s research involves studies of biogenic material fluxes to the sea floor and across this boundary. Capturing fluxes through the water column involves the use of sediment traps and measurements of water column profiles (solutes and suspended particles) and modeling; fluxes across the sea floor involves the use of benthic chambers and pore water diagenetic models. Analysis of the solid phase helps link oceanographic biogeochemistry with the sedimentary rock record. Fluxes and reactions involving O, C, N, P, CaCO3, bSi, Fe and S (and their isotopes) are among those that he works on.

Most of his students have an opportunity to join an oceanographic research cruise and/or participate in various forms of field research. Recent field study areas include: Eastern Tropical North and South Pacific Ocean; Western Tropical North Atlantic Ocean within the Amazon River plume; Eastern North Pacific (between Hawaii and Alaska); Gulf of Mexico zone of hypoxia; San Pedro/Santa Monica Basin OMZ; Yellowstone National Park Hot Springs; Mono Lake, CA; Monterey Formation, CA; Green River Formation, WY and the T-J boundary rocks (Pucara Group) in central Peru.

He is affiliated with many groups at USC, including the Geobiology, Geochemistry and Climate programs in the Department of Earth Sciences and the Marine and Environmental Biology Section of the Department of Biological Sciences; the Molecular and Computational Biology Section of the Department of Biological Sciences; and is faculty appointed in the Environmental Studies Program. He also is affiliated with the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies.

He is part of an interdisciplinary USC team leading the USC Urban Trees Initiative, partnering with the City of Los Angeles to develop an urban forest of shade trees in the community surrounding the USC Health Sciences campus. In this project he leads an effort to define how trees accumulate pollutants, how much, which trees etc. He also leads the Carbon Census group, a program to study hyperlocal distributions of CO2 and other air constituents in Los Angeles neighborhoods.

Berelson received the USC Dornsife College Raubenheimer Award in 2018, recognizing outstanding performance in teaching, scholarship and service within the university.

Education

Ph.D., Geological Sciences (Geochemistry), University of Southern California
M.S., Geological Sciences (Sedimentology), Duke University
B.A., Geological Sciences, University of Rochester

Selected publications

W. M. Berelson, A. J. West, N. E. Rollins, G. Ban-Weiss, J. Kim, J. Ko, K. Gurney and R. C. Cohen. A Large Local Decrease in Los Angeles CO2 Emissions that persists post-COVID-19 Shutdown, Submitted, ES&T, 2021.

Phillips, A. A., D. R. Speth, L. G. Miller, X. T. Wang, F. Wu, P. M. Medeiros, D. R. Monteverde, M. R. Osburn, W. M. Berelson, H. L. Betts, R. S. Wijker, S. W. Mullin, H. A. Johnson, V. J. Orphan, W. W. Fischer, A. L. Sessions (2021) Microbial succession and dynamics in meromictic Mono Lake, CA. Geobiology, 1-21.

Adkins, J., J. Naviaux, A. Subhas, S. Dong, W. Berelson (2021) The dissolution rate ofCaCO3 in the ocean. Ann. Review of Marine Science, 13, 57-80.

Santoro, A. E., C. Buchwald, A. N. Knapp, W. M. Berelson, D. G. Capone and K. L. Casciotti (2020) Nitrification and nitrous oxide production in the offshore waters of the Eastern Tropical South Pacific. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 34, e2020GB006716.

Dong, S., W. Berelson, H. Teng, N. Rollins, S. Pirbadian, M. El-Naggar, J. Adkins (2020) A mechanistic study of carbonic anhydrase enhanced calcite dissolution. Geophys. Res. Letters, 47.

Kemnitz, N., W. Berelson, D. Hammond, L. Morine, M. Figueroa, T. W. Lyons, S. Scharf, N. Rollins, E. Petsios, S. Lemieux and T. Treude (2020). Evidence of changes in sedimentation rate and sediment fabric in a low oxygen setting: Santa Monica Basin, CA. Biogeosciences, 17, 2381-2396.

Dong, S., W. M. Berelson, J. F. Adkins, N. E. Rollins, J. D. Naviaux, S. Pirbadian, M. El-Naggar and H. H. Teng (2019). An atomic force microscopy study of calcite dissolution in sea water. Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta., 283, 40-53.

Subhas, A., J. Adkins, S. Dong, N. Rollins and W. Berelson (2019) The carbonicanhydrase activity of sinking and suspended particles in the North Pacific Ocean. Limnology & Oceanography.

Naviaux, J. D., A. V. Subhas, S. Dong, N. E. Rollins, X. Liu, R. Byrne, W. M. Berelson and J. F. Adkins (2019) Calcite dissolution rates in seawater: Lab vs. In-situ measurements and inhibition by organic matter. Marine Chemistry, 215.

Hou, Y., D. E. Hammond, W. M. Berelson, N. Kemnitz, J. F. Adkins and A. Lunstrum (2019) Spatial patterns of benthic silica flux in the North Pacific reflect upper ocean production. Deep Sea Research v. 148, 25-33.

Berelson, W. M., L. Morine, A. Sessions, N. Rollins, J. Fleming and J. Schwalbach (2019) Santa Barbara Basin flood layers: Impact on sediment diagenesis. SEPMSpecial Publication No. 110, p. 233-240.

Dong, S., W. M. Berelson, N. E. Rollins, A. V. Subhas, J. D. Naviaux, A. J. Celestian, Liu, N. Turaga, N. J. Kemnitz, R. H. Byrne and J. F. Adkins (2019) Aragonite dissolution kinetics and calcite/aragonite ratios in sinking and suspended particles in the North Pacific. Earth Planetary Science Letters, 515, 1-12.

Bryant, R. M., Jones, C., Morgan, R., Gomes, M., Berelson, W., Bradley, A., Fike, D. (2019) Sulfur isotope analysis of microcrystalline iron sulfides using SIMS imaging: Extracting local paleo-environmental information from modern and
ancient sediments. Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, 33: 491-502.

Berelson, W. M., J. McManus, S. Severmann and N. Rollins (2019) Benthic Fluxes from Hypoxia-Influenced Gulf of Mexico Sediments: Impact on Bottom Water
Acidification. Jour. Marine Chemistry, 209.