World's Best Scientists 2026 revealed!
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Earth Science
USA
2026

D-Index & Metrics

Earth Science

D-Index
93
Citations
30763
World Ranking
217
National Ranking
112

Research.com Recognitions

  • 2026 - Research.com Earth Science in United States Leader Award
  • 2025 - Research.com Earth Science in United States Leader Award
  • 2022 - Geochemistry Fellow Honor, Geochemical Society and the European Association of Geochemistry
  • 2018 - Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
  • 2009 - Fellow of American Geophysical Union (AGU)

Overview

Ken O. Buesseler is affiliated with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the United States. Their research primarily focuses on Earth and Planetary Sciences, with significant contributions in Environmental Science. Within these fields, they specialize in subfields including Oceanography, Global and Planetary Change, Ecology, Inorganic Chemistry, and Environmental Chemistry.

The scientist's main topics of work cover diverse areas related to the marine environment. These include Marine and coastal ecosystems, Ocean Acidification Effects and Responses, Oceanographic and Atmospheric Processes, Marine Biology and Ecology Research, Radioactive contamination and transfer, Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics, and Radioactive element chemistry and processing.

Several recent papers authored or co-authored by Ken O. Buesseler include:

  • Metrics that matter for assessing the ocean biological carbon pump, 2020, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
  • The oceans' twilight zone must be studied now, before it is too late, 2020, Nature
  • Opening the floodgates at Fukushima, 2020, Science
  • A Visual Tour of Carbon Export by Sinking Particles, 2021, Global Biogeochemical Cycles
  • An operational overview of the EXport Processes in the Ocean from RemoTe Sensing (EXPORTS) Northeast Pacific field deployment, 2021, Elementa Science of the Anthropocene

Frequent co-authors they have collaborated with include:

  • Margaret Estapa
  • Claudia R. Benitez-Nelson
  • Melissa Omand
  • Montserrat Roca-Martí
  • David A. Siegel

Their work has been published repeatedly in key scientific venues, notably:

  • Elementa Science of the Anthropocene
  • Global Biogeochemical Cycles
  • Nature
  • Science
  • Limnology and Oceanography

Ken O. Buesseler has received several recognitions, including being named a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in 2009, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2018, and a Geochemistry Fellow Honor from the Geochemical Society and the European Association of Geochemistry in 2022.

Best Publications

  • A mesoscale phytoplankton bloom in the polar Southern Ocean stimulated by iron fertilization

    Philip W. Boyd;Andrew J. Watson;Cliff S. Law;Edward R. Abraham

  • Mesoscale iron enrichment experiments 1993-2005 : Synthesis and future directions

    P. W. Boyd;T. Jickells;C. S. Law;S. Blain

  • Eddy/Wind Interactions Stimulate Extraordinary Mid-Ocean Plankton Blooms

    Dennis J. McGillicuddy;Laurence A. Anderson;Nicholas R. Bates;Thomas Bibby

  • Synthesis of iron fertilization experiments: From the iron age in the age of enlightenment

    Hein J.W. de Baar;Philip W. Boyd;Kenneth H. Coale;Michael R. Landry

  • The decoupling of production and particulate export in the surface ocean

    Ken O. Buesseler

  • Upper Ocean Carbon Export and the Biological Pump

    Hugh W. Ducklow;Deborah K. Steinberg;Ken O. Buesseler

  • Southern Ocean Iron Enrichment Experiment: Carbon Cycling in High- and Low-Si Waters

    Kenneth H. Coale;Kenneth S. Johnson;Francisco P. Chavez;Ken O. Buesseler

  • Revisiting Carbon Flux Through the Ocean's Twilight Zone

    Ken O. Buesseler;Carl H. Lamborg;Philip W. Boyd;Phoebe J. Lam

  • An assessment of the use of sediment traps for estimating upper ocean particle fluxes

    Ken O. Buesseler;Avan N. Antia;Min Chen;Scott W. Fowler

  • Global assessment of ocean carbon export by combining satellite observations and food‐web models

    David A. Siegel;Ken O. Buesseler;Scott C. Doney;Sevrine F. Sailley

  • Carbon and nitrogen export during the JGOFS North Atlantic Bloom experiment estimated from 234Th: 238U disequilibria

    Ken O Buesseler;Michael P Bacon;J Kirk Cochran;Hugh D Livingston

  • Impacts of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plants on Marine Radioactivity

    Ken O. Buesseler;Michio Aoyama;Masao Fukasawa

  • Shedding light on processes that control particle export and flux attenuation in the twilight zone of the open ocean

    Ken O. Buesseler;Philip W. Boyd

  • Fukushima-derived radionuclides in the ocean and biota off Japan

    Ken O. Buesseler;Steven R. Jayne;Nicholas S. Fisher;Irina I. Rypina

  • Bacterial vs. zooplankton control of sinking particle flux in the ocean's twilight zone

    Deborah K. Steinberg;Benjamin A. S. Van Mooy;Ken O. Buesseler;Philip W. Boyd

  • Do upper-ocean sediment traps provide an accurate record of particle flux?

    Ken O. Buesseler

  • Utility of radium isotopes for evaluating the input and transport of groundwater-derived nitrogen to a Cape Cod estuary

    Matthew A. Charette;Ken O. Buesseler;John E. Andrews

  • The GEOTRACES Intermediate Data Product 2017

    Reiner Schlitzer;Robert F. Anderson;Elena Masferrer Dodas;Maeve Lohan

  • An assessment of particulate organic carbon to thorium-234 ratios in the ocean and their impact on the application of 234Th as a POC flux proxy

    K.O. Buesseler;C.R. Benitez-Nelson;S.B. Moran;A. Burd

  • Regional estimates of the export flux of particulate organic carbon derived from thorium-234 during the JGOFS EqPac program

    Ken O. Buesseler;John A. Andrews;Mary C. Hartman;Rebecca Belastock

  • Assessing the apparent imbalance between geochemical and biochemical indicators of meso- and bathypelagic biological activity: What the @#! is wrong with present calculations of carbon budgets?

    Adrian B. Burd;Dennis A. Hansell;Deborah K. Steinberg;Thomas R. Anderson

Frequent Co-Authors

Matthew A. Charette
Matthew A. Charette Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Pere Masqué
Pere Masqué Edith Cowan University
Philip W. Boyd
Philip W. Boyd University of Tasmania
Claudia R. Benitez-Nelson
Claudia R. Benitez-Nelson University of South Carolina
Carl H. Lamborg
Carl H. Lamborg University of California, Santa Cruz
Minhan Dai
Minhan Dai Xiamen University
Deborah K. Steinberg
Deborah K. Steinberg Virginia Institute of Marine Science
Phoebe J. Lam
Phoebe J. Lam University of California, Santa Cruz
David A. Siegel
David A. Siegel University of California, Santa Barbara
Thomas W. Trull
Thomas W. Trull Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation

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