Leveraging Unexpected Data Streams and Multiple Stable Isotope Approaches to Understand the Changing Global Sulfur Cycle

About this event

Eve-Lyn Hinckley - University of Colorado, Boulder

Sulfur is an element critical to growth of all living organisms, as well as a useful ‘tool’ employed throughout human history, as a pesticide, preservative, and component of fossil fuel sources and fertilizer production. In this talk, I will present the results of several new efforts by my research group that provide new knowledge about the changing global sulfur (S) cycle. At local-to-regional scales, my group has used the stable isotopes of S and mercury (Hg) to investigate the connection between runoff from agricultural S applications to croplands and stimulation of methylmercury production—a neurotoxin—in downstream wetlands. At national-to-global scales, we are evaluating both trends in atmospheric S deposition and farmers’ use of fertilizer S applications to sustain plant nutrition. In addition, we probe novel data sources—such as shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz—to understand changes in the S industry and its large implications for fertilizer availability, food supply chains, and economic welfare. Altogether, the results of these studies provide evidence of our deep reliance on S, a shift in how we are interacting with and using this critical element, and the consequences of excess S in the environment for wildlife and human health.

Eve-Lyn Hinckley is an Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her research focuses on studying the elements that underlie all life on Earth, with an emphasis on how they are changed by human activities and how those changes feed back to affect human welfare. Dr. Hinckley earned her Ph.D. in Geological and Environmental Sciences from Stanford University, and B.A. in Environmental Studies from Middlebury College. Her research on modern changes to the global sulfur cycle is supported by multiple funding agencies, including the prestigious CAREER program through The U.S. National Science Foundation, a grant from U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Geographic Society, the International Fertilizer Association, and The Sulphur Institute. Dr. Hinckley has been recognized as a University of Colorado Research & Innovation Office Faculty Fellow and Arts & Sciences Support of Education Through Technology Teaching Fellow.