For climate, air quality, and biogeochemical impacts of African dust on the Caribbean and the Americas.

Cassandra Gaston is an Associate Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science at the University of Miami. She received her PhD from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 2012 and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington until 2015. Dr. Gaston is an expert in characterizing the physical and chemical properties of atmospheric particles (e.g., aerosols) emitted from a variety of sources, such as smoke particles emitted from fires and dust particles emitted from deserts. Particles emitted from these sources can facilitate the production of clouds and deposit into ecosystems thereby affecting the biogeochemical cycling of trace elements and nutrients. Dr. Gaston is the site PI for the Barbados Atmospheric Chemistry Observatory, which has been used for over 50 years to document the transport of dust from the Sahara in Africa to the Caribbean and the Americas to determine its impact on clouds, storms, and ecosystem health in the Atlantic Ocean and Amazon Rainforest. Her work is important for understanding how atmospheric deposition can impact carbon sequestration to the ocean and terrestrial biosphere. She has also studied the ability of toxins generated from harmful algal blooms (HABs) to be aerosolized and impact air quality.