Dr Glen Tarran

Researcher, Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML)

Dr Glen Tarran is a researcher in the Marine Biogeochemistry and Ocean observations group at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), UK. He is interested in the dynamics and composition of microbial communities and the role they play in the cycling of carbon and nitrogen in the ocean.

He manages the PML flow cytometry facility and has a great deal of experience of using flow cytometry in a wide range of marine, freshwater and other applications involving plankton and many other particles suspended in water.

He is currently involved in the characterisation and quantification of microbial communities (<20 µm) with the NERC National Capability programmes of the Western (English) Channel Observatory and the Atlantic Meridional Transect, as well as numerous projects.

His published papers are wide ranging, relating to plankton community composition and dynamics, biogeochemical processes, such as primary, secondary and bacterial production, respiration, ocean optics and applied research. Much of his work has been conducted on oceanographic research expeditions from the tropics to polar regions.

Within the PETRA project, he will be putting his seagoing experience to good use as part of a PML team studying the response of climatically active gas production (N2O, CH4, DMS and CO) in the changing Arctic Ocean to multiple stressors, such as high temperature, high CO2 and  light; expected under future climate change scenarios. The research will be conducted in July 2018, in collaboration with German colleagues from GEOMAR on the German Research ship Polarstern in the Arctic between Greenland and Svalbard. The results of the research will be used to inform numerical models to better understand what the future holds for the Arctic.

PETRA is co-funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and by NERC.