Funding Source: National Science Foundation – The coastal waters off New England support many ecosystem services such as fisheries, recreation, conservation and shipping. Stanley is part of a newly founded Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site designed to understand how physical and chemical changes in the coastal waters stretching from Maine to North Carolina are affecting ecosystems, food webs, and productivity. The team of researchers, based at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, University of Rhode Island, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and Wellesley College, are using observations and modeling to examine processes, mechanisms and feedbacks occurring in these societally important waters. Stanley’s role is to use dissolved gases, such as oxygen, oxygen isotopes, and argon to quantify biological productivity at the base of the ecosystem. To that end, she and her students bring a portable mass spectrometer on to two to four research cruises per year to measure the oxygen and argon everywhere the ship goes. Additionally, she collects water from the CTD rosette (see image) on which to measure oxygen isotopes.