Bess Ward is an American oceanographer, biogeochemist, microbiologist, and William J. Sinclair Professor of Geosciences at Princeton University.
Ward was the first woman awarded the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award from the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) for her pioneering work on applying molecular methods for nitrogen and methane conversions as well as scaling up organismal biogeochemical rates to whole ecosystem rates.
Broadly, Ward and her lab members research how bacteria and phytoplankton transform and use nitrogen in marine and coastal ecosystems using various molecular and isotopic techniques.
[10][11][12][13] Ward and her lab developed an isotopic tracer method to measure the rate of N2O reduction in the Eastern Tropical North Pacific Ocean and found that incomplete denitrification in ODZs increases N2O accumulation and eventual efflux to the atmosphere.
[7] N2O is a potent greenhouse gas and Ward's research shows that the expanding ODZs in the global ocean may increase the amount of N2O entering the atmosphere.