Curriculum Vitae: Sanja Frka is a senior scientist at the Ruđer Bošković Institute. She received her PhD in Oceanology from the Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, Croatia, in 2008. As a postdoctoral researcher, she worked at the National Institute of Chemistry, Ljubljana, Slovenia within the Marie Curie FP7-PEOPLE-2011-COFUND project.
Sanja is a profiled scientist with expertise in atmospheric chemistry and marine biogeochemistry, with a particular focus on processes at the natural and model interfaces. She has been involved in numerous national and international projects, both as a project leader and collaborator.
She is a member of various national and international scientific organisations and is actively involved in teaching and supervising graduate, PhD, and postdoctoral students. Currently she leads the CSF research project “A burning issue of air pollution in the Adriatic coastal zone: insights into the ageing of aerosol properties and impacts on human and environmental health, ADRIAirBURN“.
The oceans and seas are facing increasing pressures from anthropogenic forcing that alter their biological, chemical, and physical properties at both local and global scales. One particularly vulnerable area is the sea surface microlayer (SML), the uppermost layer at the air-sea interface, which is highly sensitive to human impacts, climate change and other forms of environmental stress.
The SML mediates the overall exchange of energy and matter between the ocean and the atmosphere, influencing global biogeochemical cycles and climate regulation.
Recent studies conducted under the BiREADI CSF IP-2018-01-3105 project in the central Adriatic, emphasized that the SML, particularly in coastal regions, is highly responsive to atmospheric deposition of nutrients and pollutants.
These external inputs have the potential to alter the plankton community structure, organic matter production, and, consequently the chemistry of the SML, with significant implications for global air-sea exchange processes, including the exchange of climate-relevant gasses mediated by the SML. To assess the impact of ambient aerosols from diverse sources on plankton populations and sea surface chemistry, the first incubation microcosm experiment of its kind was conducted in the central Adriatic area.
We demonstrate that intense, but realistic additions of aerosols from anthropogenic sources and biomass burning emission differently impacted the SML and the underlying water by altering community structure and biogenic organic matter composition due to their different chemical composition. To better understand the biochemical adaptation strategy of phytoplankton at the level of individual species to the effects of specific constituents of deposited atmospheric particles, the change in organic matter composition produced by phytoplankton was also studied through laboratory tests on phytoplankton monocultures. The main findings of our recently completed and ongoing (ADRIAirBURN IP-2024-05-6224) research projects will be presented and discussed, focusing on lessons learned and best practices.