This award supports a planning visit to enable Professor Joseph Montoya in the Biology Department at the Georgia Institute of Technology to meet with Dr. Nguyen Ngoc Lam at the Institute of Oceanography in Nha Trang and Professor La Thi Cang, Head of the Department of Oceanology, Meteorology, and Hydrology at the Vietnam National University in Ho Chi Minh City. Their goal is to establish a collaborative project to study the distribution, activity, and diversity of N2 fixing organisms (diazotrophs) in the South China Sea. Nitrogen is an essential plant nutrient and plays a critical role in limiting primary production in many marine ecosystems. The most abundant form of nitrogen present in seawater is N2, which can be used as a substrate for growth only by N2 fixing organisms (diazotrophs). Recently biological and biogeochemical studies have demonstrated that N2 fixation is a quantitatively important, and at times the dominant, source of new N supporting biological production in diverse tropical and subtropical waters. Nevertheless, the diversity of diazotrophic organisms, their rates of activity, and the factors controlling N2 fixation all remain poorly understood.
The South China Sea is an economically important water body, containing important but severely stressed fisheries as well as significant mineral resources. The Sea is small enough that anthropogenic changes in land and water use can propagate through the river system and have an impact on oceanic properties on short time scales. A focused, collaborative field study will make an important contribution to our understanding of nutrient dynamics and ecosystem response to terrigenous forcings in this important marginal sea, and will provide an important benchmark for evaluating future changes in nutrient cycling in response to land use changes. There is sufficient overlap of interests between researchers at Georgia Tech and the Vietnamese Institutions to indicate that they can successfully pursue the activities proposed, and that the interaction will benefit both sides. The visit will also provide support for a postdoc, a graduate student and an undergraduate student. This global research experience will likely provide them many opportunities for continuing contacts with their Vietnamese colleagues throughout their research careers.
