Team Member Information

Dr. Doug Capone

Douglas G. Capone received his Ph.D. in Oceanography from the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences of the University of Miami (Fl) in 1978. He joined the faculty of the Marine Sciences Research Center of Stony Brook University (NY) in 1979 and the Center for Environmental Science of the University of Maryland in 1987. Since 1999, he has held the Wrigley Chair of Environmental Biology at the University of Southern California and is currently Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His research focuses on the role and importance of marine microbes in major biogeochemical cycles, particularly those of nitrogen and carbon, both from the perspective of the fundamental ecology of these ecosystems and their physical, chemical and biotic factors controls. Capone has studied diverse systems including the tropical open ocean, coral reefs, mangroves, temperate estuaries, groundwater aquifers and Antarctic snows. He has participated in over 30 major oceanographic expeditions to the tropical Atlantic, Caribbean and Pacific Oceans including to the Great Barrier Reef, over 10 as chief scientist. He has also conducted research at remote field stations in the Caribbean, Great Barrier Reef, McMurdo and South Pole Stations of the US Polar Program. He uses diverse approaches and technologies (e.g. of physiology, biochemistry, molecular biology, geochemistry and remote sensing). He has published over 150 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals including Science and Nature. His research has been supported by NSF, NASA, NOAA, EPA and USGS (among others). In 1999, he received and led two major NSF grants targeting Biocomplexity in the Environment in which he organized multi-investigator teams composed of biological, chemical, geochemical and physical oceanographers, atmospheric chemists and modelers. He continues to collaborate with researchers in diverse fields and countries (e.g. Australia, France, Germany). Professor Capone is a leading expert on the marine N cycle. He is called upon frequently to provide definitive overviews on the subject. In the last year, he gave synthesis papers at international workshops in England and India. He produced a still highly regarded edited volume on the marine nitrogen cycle (Nitrogen in the Marine Environment, 1983, Academic Press) and has just completed the updated second edition, now in press, as lead Editor. In particular, he has shown nitrogen fixation to be a key biogeochemical process in several marine ecosystems. He documented the quantitative importance of nitrogen fixation in tropical seagrass ecosystems during his Ph.D. studies. More recently, he has focused on open ocean systems and organisms such as the cyanobacterium Trichodesmium, ubiquitous through the tropical ocean and a substantial source of fixed nitrogen. His work has revealed how nitrogen fixation may be a major determinant of the capacity of the oligotrophic tropical oceans to take up atmospheric carbon dioxide. Professor Capone has taken a leadership role in national environmental research programs. He has also made a major contribution to the development of human resources in oceanography and environmental science. He has successfully mentored 11 M.S., 12 Ph.D. students and 12 Postdoctoral fellows as well as numerous undergraduates. His students have gone on in the fields of Chemical and Biological Oceanography, Hydrology, and Environmental Microbiology. Over half of his graduate students (8) and postdoctoral associates (7) have been female.