EEPS’s Miriam Gammerman wins inaugural Rice Chevron Energy Graduate Fellowship
by Debadrita Jana
This fellowship, disbursed through the Rice Sustainability Institute (RSI) and funded by Chevron, aims to empower fellows to develop innovative solutions aimed at lowering carbon emissions on a global scale.
Miriam Gammerman, third-year PhD student in the Biogeochemistry lab of Dr. Mark Torres, is one of ten awardees chosen from a large pool of applicants from more than ten departments and interdisciplinary programs at Rice.
Miriam’s research focuses on the formation of soil carbonate minerals and their geochemical signatures. Since carbonate formation releases CO2, it reduces the net carbon that can be consumed by the chemical weathering of silicate rocks. This is an important consideration when assessing the efficacy of enhanced weathering as a nature-based CO2 sequestration method.
Using the isotopic and trace element compositions of carbonate nodules recovered from the soils of Dance Bayou, Texas, Miriam explores how various physicochemical processes can create conditions favorable for carbonate formation within soil pores. Through her research, Miriam aims to shed light on conditions beyond which enhanced weathering becomes less effective due to carbonate formation happening concurrently with the breakdown of silicates.
By providing better constraints on the chemical micro-environment within soils that favor one process over the other, her work has the potential to inform the development of effective enhanced weathering strategies, the interpretations of various soil-based paleoenvironmental proxies, and predictions of how the soil inorganic carbon stock may respond to climate change.