John Hayes

Dr. John Hayes is Senior Scientist in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Together with members of his research group, he studies Earth’s “carbon cycle,” the global network of processes in which plants and algae produce organic matter, and animals and bacteria degrade that material to produce mobile, reactive substances like carbon dioxide and methane. Hayes’s particular specialty has been the measurement and interpretation of variations in the abundances of the isotopes of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. At the Lost City site, he will be collecting samples of organic material. Analyses of that material will help to reveal the chemical processes catalyzed by organisms at the vents.