Interview with : Laurina Oms - Doctoral student in physical oceanography at the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography, Aix-Marseille University, France.
AdAC SWOT What is your area of research and how did you choose it?
Laurina Oms : I chose to study oceanography because it's a multidisciplinary field that allows us to study natural processes, taking into account that they all work in synergy. The study of the ocean is the study of a fluid in motion where the skills of physicists, chemists, biologists... are required to move forward. So I chose oceanography because it gives us a better understanding of how nature works as a whole.
SWOT AdAC: What is the link between your area of research and SWOT?
Laurina Oms I study the link between physics and biology at fine oceanic scales. Different approaches are used for this, which complement each other. First of all, I use a modelling approach where I numerically simulate the physical and biological processes of interest, but also an in situ approach where we collect our data directly at sea. For this second approach, we use satellite observations that give us a general view of our study region and allow us to target the physical and biological structures that we want to study. SWOT will therefore provide us with high-resolution observation of the ocean surface.
AdAC SWOT What excites you about SWOT and the BioSWOT-Med campaign you're taking part in? How are you going to contribute to the campaign?
Laurina Oms I'm very curious to see what higher resolution data from the ocean surface can tell us, firstly in general terms about the physical dynamics of the ocean, and secondly about my own scientific questions, i.e. the characteristics of fine-scale physical structures and their role in the distribution of phytoplankton communities. To address this question, I am taking part in the BIOSWOT-Med mission to use flow cytometry to measure the abundance of the various phytoplankton populations present in the region, and to report these results on maps showing the abundance points and some physical features such as the direction and speed of currents.
AdAC SWOT What are your plans after the campaign?
Laurina Oms After the cruise, I'm going to analyse the physical and biological results in situ, and use this to feed my numerical model. The idea is to understand the common history of water masses and organisms during the cruise and to extend these results to define more generally the particularities of fine scales in the ocean.
BioSWOT-Med blog
