ADINA PAYTAN

ADINA PAYTAN

By Hannah Ongley

When Adina Paytan was a student at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, there was a saying passed around: The solution for pollution is dilution. Now, as a foremost marine specialist, she is acutely aware of the impacts this approach has had on ocean health. As a professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of Santa Cruz, she studies the complexities of marine biogeochemical cycles, including how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is dissolving into and changing the ocean. It’s a research endeavor that navigates the intersection of history, chemistry, and geography—a web spanning millions of years, measured in kilometers and fractions of seconds.

In 2025, this research feels more urgent than ever. Adina is aware of the growing need to counteract climate change, using all the tools at our disposal—both nature-based and geoengineered—to intentionally manipulate the environment. It all comes back to one central tenet: access to education. She’s pushing to foster climate adaptation and resilience and supporting legislative efforts to ensure every child in California achieves environmental literacy. It’s a fight Adina takes on with the fervor of someone who knows the stakes couldn’t possibly be higher.

HANNAH ONGLEY: Why do we need people with diverse backgrounds, as well as from a range of specialties, to make an impact in science?

ADINA PAYTAN: People come with different perspectives, knowledge, life experiences. You have to be open to multiple solutions in order to find something that works for everyone. I did some work in Fiji, where they are trying to protect the marine environment. From a Western perspective, [we] establish marine protected areas, but this can cause other problems. For example, the area next to a closed zone can be overfished because people don’t have access to a protected zone. The Indigenous Fijian people have this tradition: When a chief or an elder dies, you close that area for a year. Because people die at different times in different locations, the closed or protected area changes over time. When you compare islands where this traditional knowledge is practiced to those where they use closed marine protected zones, the [former has] a lot more biodiversity.

HO: What is a biogeochemical cycle in the context of marine science?

AP: Biogeochemical cycles are the way any element or compound moves between different compartments on the planet. For example, water can be in the ocean, but then it evaporates and becomes rain, which may precipitate on land. The water goes into lakes, rivers, and groundwater, then back into the ocean. That’s the water cycle. All other elements cycle like that, moving from one reservoir to another.

The movements of these elements from one compartment to another, and the processes that cause, enhance, or facilitate these movements, are biogeochemical cycles. Each element or compound has its own unique characteristics. That’s what makes our planet dynamic, which is different, for example, from the moon, which is just a big rock. These movements, from the biosphere to the hydrosphere to the atmosphere to the lithosphere to deep Earth, are connected.

HO: Are you hopeful about geoengineering solutions that seek to modify the climate? How can these technologies work harmoniously with nature-based solutions?

AP: They have to work together. We know that we have to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere if we want to reach our target of not increasing temperature above two degrees Celsius. Because even if we move all the things we can into alternative energy—everybody drives an electric vehicle, or we don’t use coal—there are still technologies we don’t have solutions for. We don’t know how to fly a plane without using fuel. If we want to reach net zero by 2050, we have to do it in a very careful and responsible way. We’re just starting to have frameworks for how to do it well, and how to do environmental impact assessments. These technologies are still in the research stage.

In the meantime, we have natural processes that absorb carbon from the atmosphere. We know that if you enhance the forests, the trees will take carbon. And there are blue carbon ecosystems, which absorb a lot more carbon than forests and bury it underground, so they’re less susceptible to fires and deforestation. Until the other technologies are validated, trusted, and in a position to be scaled up, we have to conserve and restore ecosystems that uptake carbon. When you restore a wetland, it’s not only absorbing carbon from the atmosphere, it’s also purifying water. It’s protecting the coast from waves, storms, and hurricanes. It provides recreation sites, fisheries, and nurseries for other organisms. I’m trying to understand how we can do this in a way that maximizes the benefits for people and nature.

HO: As a teacher, how do you give your students hope for the future?

AP: The climate crisis causes climate anxiety, and a whole generation of younger students feels hopeless. But I think we’re not at that stage yet. Everybody can do something. It could be I ride my bicycle one day a week, or I eat meat only two days a week instead of every day. Things are going to change, but we have to be hopeful.