Anna MacPherson

Office Phone: 805 893-6176
Email Address: macpherson@msi.ucsb.edu

I am excited to be involved in a number of different projects in the Hofmann lab that are helping us understand how marine invertebrates will respond to future changes in ocean temperature and pH.  I have been involved in many stages of the research process including collecting sea urchin and water samples, culturing urchin larvae, analyzing seawater chemistry, and performing molecular processing.

Recently, I have spent a considerable amount of my time in the lab tackling the challenge of measuring the carbonate chemistry of each treatment in our CO₂ delivery system.  It has been a priority in the lab to be able to measure pCO₂ in real time.  I have adapted standard operating procedures for determining pH via the spectrophotometric method using m-cresol purple and total alkalinity in seawater using an open-cell titration (Dickson et al. 2007).  These precise and accurate pH and total alkalinity measurements, along with salinity and temperature, allow us to determine total pCO₂.  Feel free to contact me for further information about the equipment and reagents we use to make these measurements.

I am especially interested in science education. I taught high school biology and chemistry at The Millennium HIgh School in Manhattan for five years prior to moving to Santa Barbara and I continue to be involved in curriculum design and evaluation in the NYC public school system. In addition, I am helping spearhead new climate change education projects here in California that bring cutting edge science from top Universities (including UCSB) to public school education.  I am always on the lookout for interesting ways to integrate current science research into the classroom. 

References
Dickson, A.G., Sabine, C.L. and Christian, J.R. (Eds.) 2007. Guide to Best Practices for Ocean CO₂ Measurements. PICES Special Publication 3, 191 pp.