"I have always been fascinated by our natural environment and have spent my lifetime poking around in watery systems to observe the inhabitants within. Working at PML fosters this passion and enables me to discover and communicate how biological, chemical and physical systems interact in pristine and impacted marine ecosystems. "
Professor Andy Rees is a senior research scientist, leader of the UK Atlantic Meridional Transect (AMT) project and the coordinator for PML impact activities related to the promotion of “Cleaner Seas for Nature and Society”.
He is a biogeochemist who has participated in and led research projects and oceanographic expeditions on a global scale including to Arctic and Antarctic regions. His research interests focus on biogeochemical cycling in the marine environment and on the impact of environmental change on the biological and chemical processes which control the ocean and atmospheric exchange of greenhouse gases.
Recent research projects include the impact of environmental change on the marine nitrogen cycle, the activity and distribution of nitrogen fixing organisms and the sea-air flux of nitrous oxide and methane between river catchments and the open ocean. Dr Rees and colleagues are currently investigating the impact of ocean acidification, warming and sea-ice retreat in Polar waters and the transport of carbon and nutrients between the UK land-mass and our coastal seas.
He leads and manages scientific programmes which range in scale from 2 to 3 people to multi-institutional involvement over periods of two to ten years and has published over 80 peer reviewed research papers.
Key Projects
- AMT – Atlantic Meridional Transect
- CANDYFLOSS – CArbon/Nutrient DYnamics and FLuxes Over Shelf Systems (NERC: NE/K002058/1) (2013 – 2016)
- SONIC – Shortcut in the Oceanic Nitrogen Cycle. Fluxes and Microbial Pathways of Nitrogen Remineralisation in the Ocean’s Twilight Zone (NERC: NE/N00390X/1) (2016-2018)
- LOCATE – Land Ocean Carbon Transfer
- PETRA – Pathways and emissions of climate-relevant trace gases in a changing Arctic Ocean (NE/R012830/1)
- AtlantEco – Atlantic ECOsystems assessment, forecasting & sustainability (H2020-BG-2019-2)
Selected Publications
- Rees, A.P., Brown, I.J., Jayakumar, A. and Ward, B.B. (2016). The inhibition of N2O production by ocean acidification in cold temperate and polar waters. Deep-Sea Research II, 127, 93–101.
- Rees, A.P., Tait, K., Widdicombe, C.E., Quartly G.D., McEvoy, A.J. and Al-Moosawi, L. (2016). Metabolically active, non-nitrogen fixing, Trichodesmium in UK coastal waters during winter. J. Plankton Res. 38(3): 673–678.
- Rees, A.P., Turk-Kubo, K.A., Al-Moosawi, L., Alliouane, S., Gazeau, F., Hogan, M.E., Zehr, J.P. (2016). Ocean acidification impacts on nitrogen fixation in the coastal western Mediterranean Sea. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science.
- Rees A.P., Nightingale P.D., Poulton A.L., Smyth T.J., Tarran G.A., Tilstone G.H. (2017). The Atlantic Meridional Transect Programme (1995 – 2016). Progress in Oceanography, 158, 3-18.
- Luo, Y.-W., Doney, S. C., Anderson, L. A., Benavides, M., Bode, A., Bonnet, S., Boström, K. H., Böttjer, D., Capone, D. G., Carpenter, E. J., Chen, Y. L., Church, M. J., Dore, J. E., Falcón, L. I., Fernández, A., Foster, R. A., Furuya, K., Gómez, F., Gundersen, K., Hynes, A. M., Karl, D. M., Kitajima, S., Langlois, R. J., LaRoche, J., Letelier, R. M., Marañón, E., McGillicuddy Jr., D. J., Moisander, P. H., Moore, C. M., Mouriño-Carballido, B., Mulholland, M. R., Needoba, J. A., Orcutt, K. M., Poulton, A. J., Raimbault, P., Rees, A. P., Riemann, L., Shiozaki, T., Subramaniam, A., Tyrrell, T., Turk-Kubo, K. A., Varela, M., Villareal, T. A., Webb, E. A., White, A. E., Wu, J., and Zehr, J. P. (2012). Database of diazotrophs in global ocean: abundances, biomass and nitrogen fixation rates. Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., 5, 47-106, doi:10.5194/essdd-5-47-2012, 2012.
- Katsiaryna Pabortsava, Richard S. Lampitt, J. Benson, Karen Casciotti, Christian Crowe, Robert McLachlan, Frédéric A. C. Le Moigne, C. Mark Moore, Corinne Pebody, Paul Provost, Andrew P. Rees, Gavin Tilstone and E. Malcolm S.Woodward. (2017). Carbon sequestration in the deep Atlantic enhanced by Saharan dust. Nature Geoscience, 10, 189–194.