Anna Michalak
Anna Michalak
Faculty Associate in Environmental Science and Engineering
B.Sc., University of Guelph, 1997; M.S., Stanford University, 1998; Ph.D., 2003. Caltech, 2025-26.
Research Summary
My research interests lie in two areas. The first is addressing the impacts of climate change on inland and coastal water quality, with a focus on eutrophication, harmful algal blooms and hypoxia. The second area is characterizing the cycling and emissions of trace gases at the Earth surface at facility to global scales – scales directly relevant to informing climate and policy – primarily through the use of atmospheric observations that provide the clearest constraints at these critical scales. My approach is highly data-driven, with a common methodological thread being the development and application of spatiotemporal statistical data fusion methods for optimizing the use of limited in situ and remote sensing environmental data.
Research Options
Environmental Science and Engineering;
Profile
Personal Website: https://www.anna-michalak.com/
Research Website: https://michalaklab.stanford.edu/
2026-27
ESE 112. Earth's Carbon Cycle.
6 units (2-0-4); third term, 2026-27.
Prerequisites: ESE 103 or instructor's permission..
An exploration of the research frontier on Earth's carbon cycle. Starting from an overview of the major reservoirs and fluxes of carbon among the atmosphere, ocean, land biosphere, and lithosphere, the course moves quickly to frontier problems, including the partitioning of anthropogenic CO₂ between the ocean and land sinks, the spatiotemporal variability of terrestrial and oceanic carbon fluxes, the role of disturbance and ecosystem dynamics, and the response of the carbon cycle to a changing climate. Modern observational datasets—including atmospheric CO₂ records, satellite retrievals of column CO₂ and solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence, eddy-covariance measurements, as well as ship-based and float-based ocean carbon observations—are used to constrain and evaluate carbon cycle models. Through hands-on projects, students can develop, test, and critically analyze models of the carbon cycle and confront them with contemporary data. Enrollment is limited to 15 students.
Instructors: Dukes, Frankenberg, Michalak, Schneider, Thompson, Zakem
Instructors: Dukes, Frankenberg, Michalak, Schneider, Thompson, Zakem