My Research Story

Julio E. Ceniceros, M.S.

About Me

Greetings! My name is Julio Ceniceros, and I am currently a Ph.D. student in my home-town of El Paso, TX. As a NOAA EPP Earth System Sciences and Remote Sensing Scholar and research assistant at the University of Texas at El Paso, I passionately devote my time and efforts into discovering and understanding how Arctic coastal environmental dynamics are developing in response to climate change. 


Introduction & Background

I was never able to decide which Arctic ecosystem I liked to study the most. Trying to choose among the terrestrial, marine, or atmospheric ecosystems was impossible for me, I loved them all. When I started my Ph.D. with my current academic advisor, Dr. Craig Tweedie, he made me realize that I didn’t have to choose and could study all three along the coastal regions.

The Arctic is a magical and extreme place, which is probably one of the main reasons why I have enjoyed studying it so much. The land you stand on is called permafrost (land that is frozen continuously for at least two years) and is alive with shifting ice patterns that grow and shrink every year. The Arctic Ocean experiences some of the most drastic seasonal changes induced by the expansion of sea ice and high river run-off. The shallow Arctic atmosphere that is cold all year long and is heavily polluted in the winter transitions from from 24-hour sunlight to 24-hour darkness every year. All three environments are dramatically changing in response to climate change both independently and collaboratively.

These changes have even led the National Science Foundation to call this high-latitude region as the New Arctic. My research aligns with the New Arctic by seeking to understand how lagoons along the Alaskan Beaufort Sea coast have changed in the past 40 years using satellite images. I measure and obtain water quality parameters that I can then plot as a time-series and maps, uncovering any significant changes and trends in the past four decades. For example, do increasing air temperatures signify and equally existing increase lagoon water temperatures? If so, how will these temperature increases affect the coastal ecosystems and all those who depend on these lagoons for fishing?


Research Questions

Among the many questions still unanswered, the ones I have chosen to focus on are:

· How has the thermal phenology (the yearly pattern) of lagoons’ sea surface temperature evolved in the past 40 years?

· Are chlorophyll concentrations (algae and phytoplankton), turbidity (suspended sediment), or coastal erosion rates linked to the lagoon’s spatial and temporal thermal patterns?


Methods

I will be answering these questions by using a new online platform called Google Earth Engine (GEE). GEE is a public online website that has a huge database of satellite images for scientists to analyze directly online using Google’s high performing computers. The great advantage about using GEE is that I can analyze images without having to download them first to my computer and using my own computing power. 

I plan on using multiple satellites (i.e. Landsat and MODIS, etc.) to obtain as many images as I can over my region of interest, which again are coastal lagoons of Alaska’s northern coast. I will use the information from these data images to obtain three important water quality parameters: Surface temperature, chlorophyll concentration, and turbidity. These calculated variables will then be plotted as both graphs and maps that illustrate how the water quality has changed in the past 40 years.

The following steps will be taken to obtain water quality variables and understand their significance:

1)     Obtain satellite images from 1980 to the present of the northern coast of Alaska.

2)     Analyze the pixels of coastal lagoons to derive the three water quality parameters mentioned above.

3)     Create a long-term, high-quality record for the three variables and use to analyze spatio-temporal changes or trends.

4)     Discuss ecosystem, social, and economic impacts deriving from these changes.

5)     Communicate findings to scientific community and also directly to the native villages in a way that is easy to understand and disseminate throughout the community. 


Expected Results

Since my area is part of the larger-scale warming Arctic, I hypothesize my findings will find some sort of sea surface temperature increase in these shallow coastal marine ecosystems. A longer and warmer ice-free season will have direct impact on primary productivity so an increase in chlorophyll concentration is also expected. Since a large part of coastlines is made up of permafrost bluff faces, increases in water temperature can cause geochemical reactions to occur and result in the speed up of coastal erosion. What used to be permafrost land is now suspended sediment in the lagoons. An increase in turbidity is also hypothesized to be identified in the majority of lagoon ecosystems. 


Social Relevance

The hypothesized results from the analysis can then be used to assess socio-ecological issues, in particular the assessments of hazards and risks. Any identified hazards can then be quickly and effectively communicated to native fisherman, first responders, scientists, among many other public or private stakeholders. Results of the study would also facilitate proper mitigation and adaptation strategies for native communities. 

This research is supported and monitored by The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – Cooperative Science Center for Earth System Sciences and Remote Sensing Technologies under the Cooperative Agreement Grant #: NA16SEC4810008. The author would like to thank The City College of New York, NOAA Center for Earth System Sciences and Remote Sensing Technologies, and NOAA Office of Education, Educational Partnership Program for full fellowship support for Julio E. Ceniceros. The statements contained within the Story Map are not the opinions of the funding agency or the U.S. government, but reflect the author’s opinions.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – Cooperative Science Center for Earth System Sciences and Remote Sensing Technologies