When Samantha Siedlecki was a young girl in land-locked Chicago, she would go on family vacations to the beach, excursions that gave her a chance to play in the waves, build sandcastles, watch crabs, and fall in love with the ocean.<\/p>\n
In high school, Siedlecki worked as a volunteer at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. As her fascination with the ocean grew, she began looking into college programs in marine sciences.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was always fascinated by what was going on in the ocean,\u201d says Siedlecki, who received her bachelor\u2019s degree in marine sciences with a concentration in marine geology from Eckerd College and her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn grad school I mostly focused on theoretical questions, but real-world applications of my questions required less-idealized approaches,\u201d Siedlecki says. \u201cI wanted to learn about more realistic simulations in my post-doc work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now an assistant professor of marine sciences at the University of Connecticut, Siedlecki spearheads research on coastal environments. She recently received a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration<\/a> (NOAA) to develop a regional model of ocean acidification for the East Coast.<\/p>\n The ocean has been becoming increasingly acidic since the industrial revolution began releasing unprecedented amounts of fossil fuel emissions into the air about two centuries ago. As the ocean absorbs increasing amounts of CO2, naturally occurring carbonate ion concentrations decrease. These ions are used to build calcium carbonate shells and coral structures. Organisms like oysters and scallops secrete calcium carbonate shells, but this phenomena affects millions of organisms that rely on these ecological building blocks.<\/p>\n Ocean acidification affects organisms in other physiological ways too. For example, fish become unable to detect predators as well in acidic environments, says Siedlecki.<\/p>\n Her research examines how coastal waters may be feeling this impact even more than other parts of the ocean since they are affected by additional factors like rainfall, nutrient run off, water column metabolism, and sediment interactions.<\/p>\n The global models scientists are currently using to study ocean acidification cannot simulate these local processes since regional biogeochemical factors exacerbate global changes, she says.<\/p>\n Models exist for studying coastal environments, but so far they haven\u2019t been applied to these questions.<\/p>\n Siedlecki\u2019s project will evaluate whether a regionally downscaled projection for the East Coast can be used to evaluate the ability of existing models to accurately detect changes in ocean acidification as it relates to scallops, which need carbonate to build their protective shells. The findings will enable Siedlecki to develop a strategy for observational network improvement to empower the shellfish industry to observe ocean changes as needed.<\/p>\n East Coast, West Coast<\/strong><\/p>\n Before coming to UConn in 2017, Siedlecki worked on a project through the University of Washington addressing hypoxia, an oxygen deficiency in a biotic environment like the ocean. In hypoxic hot spots, ocean creatures are stressed, and if they can\u2019t move away from these stressors, they can\u2019t survive.<\/p>\n To address this problem, Siedlecki created forecasts for hypoxia, something fishers and other aquaculture farmers can use as an important tool to plan their activity.<\/p>\n \u201cStakeholders want to know whether or not we could provide forecasts for low oxygen for crabs so that we could warn them about putting crab pots in certain locations likely to experience lower oxygen,\u201d Siedlecki says. \u201cThey want to know the likelihood of pulling up a pot full of dead crabs\u2014and that\u2019s something no one wants to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Siedlecki says she has received positive feedback from the stakeholders who use her models every day.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know people are using it. We\u2019ve gotten good responses over email and when we\u2019ve presented at conferences,\u201d Siedlecki says. \u201cWith any new tool it takes some time to figure out exactly how you\u2019re going to use it. But we know that people are using it.\u201d<\/p>\n With her relocation to UConn, Siedlecki is looking for new ways to apply the tools she developed in Washington to New England\u2019s coastal environments.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to continue to work on prediction in the east and west coast systems and expand the tool,\u201d Siedlecki says.<\/p>\n Predicting the Future<\/strong><\/p>\n In addition to the NOAA grant, Siedlecki was also recently funded for a project to project ocean conditions out to 2100.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to see what happens to the biogeochemistry in combination with the temperature changes to have a better idea of how ocean health is projected to change in this ecosystem,\u201d Siedlecki says.<\/p>\n Through another project, Siedlecki is working with tribal communities on the Pacific Coast to create climate projections for the area. The project seeks to help coastal tribal communities understand how the species which are so important to their culture might be affected by changes to the ocean ecosystem.<\/p>\n The team for this project includes Jan Newton, an applied physicist at the University of Washington, and Melissa Poe, a social scientist at NOAA who offers the necessary background to enable the group to work effectively with the tribal communities.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re addressing the impact beyond the dollar signs,\u201d Siedlecki says. \u201cWe try to assess the impact on human life beyond the scope of what we are trained to do as oceanographers.\u201d<\/p>\n Follow UConn Research on <\/em>Twitter<\/em><\/a> & <\/u><\/em>LinkedIn<\/em><\/a>.<\/u><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Samantha Siedlecki spearheads research on coastal environments, and is currently developing a regional model of ocean acidification for the East Coast. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":156489,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,2076,2387,173],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2140],"class_list":["post-156005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-research","category-sustainability","category-uconn-avery-point","series-meet-the-researcher"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-26 11:52:46","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156005"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":156490,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156005\/revisions\/156490"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/156489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156005"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=156005"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=156005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}