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Identification of carbon monoxide oxidising bacteria in Arctic soils following glacier retreats
Supervisor: Marcela Hernandez (BIO)
Will Tallon is a Leverhulme Trust Doctoral Scholar at University of East Anglia on the Critical Decade for Climate Change programme.
Will Tallon graduated from the University of Reading in the summer of 2022 with a first-class honours degree in Biological Sciences. His degree culminated in a final year project looking at bacterial colonies present within speleothems, calcium carbonate structures in caves, the most well-known of which are stalactites and stalagmites. He is passionate about climate change and has made positive impacts within his lifestyle for a number of years now, including converting part of his garden into an allotment during the Covid lockdowns. Growing fruit and veg brought home the challenges of our climate extremes, the very hot summers, as well as the very wet springs, even when trying to grow plants on a small scale.
What are you most excited about in joining the Critical Decade PhD programme?
I am very excited to be joining the Critical Decade programme, especially when we have had heat waves across most of Southern Europe this summer, and with the UK temperature record being broken several times within a week.
I will be researching carbon-monoxide oxidising bacteria in glacial retreat soils in Svalbard, as more and more soil is freshly exposed by global warming causing glaciers to melt. Carbon-monoxide release from this soil can promote the greenhouse effect.
For this reason, I am delighted to be joining a university renowned for its climate research, on such an exciting programme, bringing together 20 PhD’s, partnering with ClimateUEA, and cannot wait to get started with my fellow 19 scholars.