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Katja Meyer

Assistant Professor, Environmental & Earth Science

Headshot of Katja Meyer

Contact Information

Address
Collins Science Center 215
Phone
503-370-6922

Biography

My academic department page

How do I incorporate sustainability into the courses I teach?

I teach the following courses: ERTH 121: Earth System Science, ERTH 347: Earth's Climate: Past, Present, and Future, and ERTH 374: Biogeochemistry

How does my research advance sustainability?

Today anthropogenic greenhouse-gas driven climate warming is changing our oceans. As the climate heats up, the oceans warm, acidify, and lose oxygen. Marine scientists study these changes and use climate models to predict future impacts. However, the response of marine ecosystems to anthropogenic warming is incompletely understood. How will rapid climate and ocean chemistry changes impact marine biodiversity? One way geoscientists address this question is to examine the relationships between climate, biodiversity, and ocean chemistry during the “Big Five” mass extinctions because all of them are associated with rapid climate changes.

In the Meyer lab, we are interested in the biogeochemical processes that lead to ocean anoxia and in identifying intervals of anoxia/euxinia (anoxic and sulfidic conditions) in Earth’s history. Much of our work centers around the end-Permian mass extinction and modern environments we think are similar to end-Permian ocean conditions. Our current projects include: 1.) using Earth system models to examine the impact of climate warming on ocean life and anoxia during the end-Permian and Early Triassic, and 2.) refining interpretations of sulfur isotopes in the rock record through study of modern processes in sulfidic Fayetteville Green Lake (New York).

 

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Meyer, Katja M., Ridgwell, A. and J. L. Payne. “The Influence of the Biological Pump on Ocean Chemistry: Implications for Long-Term Trends in Marine Redox Chemistry, the Global Carbon Cycle, and Marine Animal Ecosystems.” Geobiology 14.3 (2016): 207-219.Silverstein, T.P., K.L.M. Holman, S.C. Meyer, and S.R. Kirk. “Myoglobin structure and function: A multi-week biochemistry laboratory project.” Educational Portal of the Protein Data Bank (PDB). 2016.

External Grants and Fellowships

Katja Meyer, Environmental & Earth Science Undergraduate New Investigator Award, “Improving interpretations of δ34 S pyrite with isotopic measurements of individual pyrite framboids,” American Chemical Society- Petroleum Research Fund, $55,000, October 2015.

External Awards

Katja Meyer, Environmental and Earth Sciences. Kavli Fellow, Kavli Frontiers of Science Indonesian-American Symposium. U.S. National Academy of Sciences and The Kavli Foundation, August 2016.

Willamette University

Willamette University Sustainability Institute

Address
900 State Street
Salem Oregon 97301 U.S.A.
Phone
503-370-6482