PeopleFacultyRobert J. (Bob) Swap

Robert J. (Bob) Swap
Research Assistant Professor

Regions of Interest:
Southern Africa, South America

Research:
Atmospheric, aerosol and trace gas transports/ characterizations; atmosphere/biosphere interactions

I have actively pursued field research with opportunities as an undergraduate to assist in field research in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Eastern Shore of Virginia. The culminating event of my undergraduate field research experience was my involvement with the NASA Amazon Boundary Layer Experiment – 2B (ABLE-2B) in the central Amazon basin. As a graduate student, I continued to pursue international environmental research with significant work in southern Africa. My graduate field research was conducted at the Etosha Ecological Institute located in the Etosha National Park of Namibia as part of the Southern Africa Fire-Atmosphere Research Initiative – SAFARI-92. The emphasis on southern African environmental research continued during my time as a Post-Doctoral University Research Fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand – Johannesburg, South Africa. These experiences, individually and collectively, contributed to the refinement of an idea first generated during my time as an undergraduate assistant in the Amazon basin of the need for interdisciplinary environmental research that addresses how regional systems in the developing world function and how these systems might respond to global change, whether it be climatic, social, economic or otherwise environmental. It is the need to address that question that I used to guide me through my involvement with the Southern African Regional Science Initiative – SAFARI 2000, that I carried with me as a Fulbright Senior Specialist to Mozambique and that drives my science today.

The approach that I have taken has been to combine field measurements and observations of the biogeophysical system from a primarily atmospheric perspective. I am a firm believer that before one can develop a conceptual model of the behavior of a system, one must begin with observations, preferably one’s own. For me this has involved the characterization of vertical and horizontal nature of atmospheric environments and air parcel transports at discrete locations (Swap et al. 1992; 1996a). I have also used coincident aerosol and trace gas sampling to help verify these transports. From these point observations, I have incorporated remotely sensed observations of both the atmosphere and surface processes to scale these point observations and the understanding of processes generated thereof up to the synoptic (regional) scale (Swap et al. 1996b; 2003b; Swap and Tyson, 1999). As I have developed as a graduate student and as a professional, I have also placed some effort into employing techniques that provide conservative tracers and unequivocal evidence of aerosol and trace gas sources and transports. This has lead me to not only collaborate with aerosol scientists around the world (Annegarn, Artaxo, Maenhaut, Talbot), but to also incorporate the use of stable isotopes into my environmental research to aid in source determination. This need became evident with the unanswered questions generated by my paper on Saharan dust transport to the Amazon basin (Swap et al. 1992). These questions include uncertainties concerning magnitudes of deposition of biogeochemically important trace species as well as the existence of multiple sources of these inputs for that system.

In this pursuit of multiple sources of aerosols, my work shifted in geographic focus to subequatorial Africa. An opportunity to leverage my interests with those of the large IGBP/NASA aerosol and trace gas chemistry presented itself with the Southern Africa Fire-Atmosphere Research Initiative – SAFARI-92/TRACE-A. While the larger effort was focused on fire-atmosphere interactions, especially as it related to ozone production, I used the opportunity to pursue questions about long-range transport of southern African aerosols. My use of paired stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic analysis on southern African aerosols during my Ph.D. led to one of the first papers utilizing bulk stable nitrogen isotopic signatures to aid in source region determination for aerosols subjected to long range atmospheric transport and that established a physical link between southern African aerosols to the tropical south Atlantic (Swap et al. 1996a; 1996c). New questions resulting from that work showed the possibility of multiple sources of ozone precursors to an area of enhanced mid-tropospheric ozone in the tropical South Atlantic. Those questions formed part of the basis of the scientific rationale for the Southern African Research Initiative - SAFARI 2000 and were in part the subject of the SAFARI 2000 wet and dry season field campaigns. They have been conceptually addressed with more recent work (Swap et al. 2003b).

During a time when there was much interest in the radiative impacts of aerosol generation, transport and distribution, I continued to focus on the quantification of atmospheric deposition of aerosols and the impacts of the biogeochemically important trace species both over oceans (Swap et al. 1996a) and over southern Africa (Ph.D. thesis, 1996; Garstang et al. 1998). It is rewarding to see that this research area continues to gain momentum and grow in the number of studies focusing on biogeochemical and potential ecosystem health effects due to long-range transport of aerosols. The work in the Amazon and over the Atlantic Ocean contributed to the scientific rationale for the development of the SAFARI 2000 initiative.

I have had the unique opportunity to participate not only in the genesis of a major field campaign on the basis of scientific questions resulting from earlier research efforts of mine, but also in the organization, coordination and implementation of field intensives associated with the successful execution of SAFARI 2000. From my role as Principal Investigator on a successful NSF-International Programs sponsored workshop proposal in 1998, to my role as co-lead author of the SAFARI 2000 Implementation and Science plans (Swap et al. 2002a) to my role as lead author of the first science overview (Swap et al. 2002b) to the first published attempt at synthesizing the first results of the SAFARI 2000 Dry Season Campaign (Swap et al. 2003), I have learned the valuable lesson of translating unanswered scientific questions and using them to drive significant components of the atmospheric and environmental change communities to address these questions on a regional scale in the developing world. I have served as U.S. Coordinator and Principal Investigator of SAFARI 2000, Workshop Coordinator, AGU Special Session Co-coordinator and AGU JGR-Atmospheres Special Section Co-coordinator (JGR-Atmospheres, vol. 108, no. D13, 2003). I have learned to work together with national and international scientists and science program managers. I have had to work with communities from ground-based, airborne and remote sensing perspectives, and from disciplines as varied as radiation science to fire science to plant physiology to cloud physics, in pursuit of the need to identify and understand relationships between the physical, chemical, biological and anthropogenic processes that underlie the biogeophysical and biogeochemical processes of southern Africa. The purpose of the SAFARI 2000, and the issue that continues to drive me to the region is to understand and predict the corresponding regional sensitivities to the impacts of global change in its broadest form.

My current research interests continue to be aligned with understanding global change in its broadest form on regional environmental systems. I am making a concerted effort to incorporate more remote sensing into my studies and have done so through my involvement with NASA Earth Observing Systems research, validation and calibration activities, mainly associated with pre and post SAFARI 2000 field activities. Another area that I am interested in exploring is the union of environmental sciences and human health issues in the developing world. I have begun to take steps in this direction through collaborations with the University of Virginia Schools of Nursing and Medicine. In order to understand how the region functions as an environmental unit, it is necessary to incorporate human social, cultural and economic drivers. A lesson learned from my involvement with ABLE-2B, SAFARI-92 and most recently, SAFARI 2000, is the need for environmental research has to be societally relevant, especially in the developing world. I continue to be involved with efforts focused on the translation of scientific findings from SAFARI 2000 to southern African policy makers as evidenced with my participation in the Science to Policy Dialogue of the Air Pollution Information Network in Africa (APINA) in Maputo Mozambique, September 21 – 24, 2003.

From a research mentoring perspective, I have had the good fortune to have been involved with influencing and perhaps inspiring the research of a number of graduate students while at the University of Virginia as a fellow graduate student, a research scientist and assistant research professor. Prior to my appointment as an Assistant Research Professor, this role was informal. These students include: Bill Gilhooly (M.Sc.); Vaughan Turekian (M.Sc. and Ph.D.); Donna Ballentine (Ph.D.). I have been formally involved with the committees of Bella Angelini (Ph.D. 2002); Julieta Aranibar (Ph. D. 2003), Suzanne Walther (M.Sc. 2003) and Kaycie Billmark (Ph.D. 2004). I am currently involved with co-advising three students [Lindsey Clark Tate (M.A. Candidate); Deb Stein (Ph.D. Candidate) and Lt. John Dietter (M.Sc. Candidate)] and serving as a committee member for an additional three students [Tom Szuba (Ph.D. Candidate); Pei Jing Lee (Ph.D. Candidate) and Lindsey Bowser (Ph.D. Candidate)]. I am involved with mentoring of students abroad as well. Internationally, I have helped advised several students at the University of the Witwatersrand – Johannesburg [Joseph Kanyanga (M.Sc. Candidate); Peter Bundi (M.Sc. Candidate); Antonio Queface (M.Sc. Candidate); Juliao Cumbane (M.Sc. Candidate); Muke Mukelabai, (B.Sc. candidate)]. I view this as part of a personal commitment to the recognition and enhancement of capacity in the developing world.

I am continually involved with the generation of research ideas. I have an unusual willingness to collaborate in the development of ideas, projects and proposals, not only in my broad field of environmental sciences, but across disciplines as well. This openness to explore new ideas has led to my being involved with students and faculty from Anthropology, Architecture, Biology, Commerce, Digital History, Engineering, Law, Medicine and Nursing at the University of Virginia. It has led to the formulation of several interdisciplinary proposals (USAID, NCEAS, NIH) as well as to the development of a jointly offered Study Abroad course shared between Environmental Sciences and Anthropology. Outside of the University, I have strong collaborative ties to a number of federal institutions, most notably NASA. I have been working with scientists from the following NASA centers: Goddard Space Flight Center; Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Langley Research Center; Dryden Research Flight Center and the Ames Research Center. The commonality between all of these interactions is my desire to identify and understand relationships between the physical, chemical, biological and anthropogenic processes that underlie the biogeophysical and biogeochemical processes in ecosystems of the developing world. I will continue to develop my observational and analytical tools from my atmospheric and environmental sciences base to address real world issues surrounding the impacts of global change on regional biogeophysical systems.

Bob Swap is associated with the SAVANA Project.