Adina Paytan is a faculty member in earth and planetary sciences, ocean sciences, and the Institute of Marine Sciences at UC Santa Cruz. Her research is focused on marine biogeochemical cycles and dynamics in the present and past, and on their connection to the Earth system as a whole. To investigate the relation between these cycles and global climate, tectonics, and environmental changes she uses the chemical and isotopic record enclosed in seawater, fresh water, rocks and sediments, living and dead organisms, aerosols, gases, and other archives which record Earth processes at present and over time scales of centuries to many millions of years. In this research particular emphasis is given to the study of anthropogenically induced perturbations that effect aquatic biogeochemical processes such as methane emission from wetlands, trace metal recycling in sediments, aerosol chemical composition and coastal water pollution.