Student Research Profile: Fowzia Ahmed
The Department of Environment and Geography is proud to highlight recently published graduate student research.
Fowzia Ahmed is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Environment and Geography, studying nutrient dynamics of sea-ice algae in the Arctic. She is working under the supervision of C.J. Mundy. She studied Environmental Science for both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh.
Fowzia is passionate about the natural world and loves challenging, adventurous activities. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in Bangladesh and has been fortunate to extend her work from the tropics to the polar regions. Most of her Arctic fieldwork has been in Sanikiluaq (Belcher Islands), located in the southeastern part of Hudson Bay. She collected sea-ice and water samples during spring 2022–2024 and led one of the field campaigns. She also worked with Akvaplan-niva and conducted fieldwork aboard the icebreaker RV Kronprins Haakon with the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI), where she collected sea-ice samples close to the North Pole in 2023 and 2024. Through these experiences, she has studied sea-ice algae from sub-Arctic Hudson Bay to the High and Central Arctic.
THE RESEARCH
In her recent study, she compiled a 30-year pan-Arctic dataset of sea-ice and sub-ice nutrients together with sea-ice chlorophyll a to examine regional, seasonal, and vertical patterns. The results show strong regional contrasts, with bottom-ice nutrients and algal biomass especially high in parts of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, likely linked to tidal-driven mixing at the ice–ocean interface, and lowest in Arctic Ocean basins. Overall, the study improves understanding of pan-Arctic patterns in sea-ice nutrients. The study was published in the peer-reviewed journal Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene in December 2025.
THE PUBLISHING
How did you select the journal to publish in? As a long synthesis paper, Elementa was the first choice for my co-authors, as not many journals publish this kind of long manuscript. We also considered processing time. Overall, the journal seemed like a great fit for our publication, and we are happy with the experience from submission to publication.
What did you think of the reviewer comments? Honestly, I was a bit worried about the comments before submitting as it is a synthesis manuscript. However, the reviewer comments were minor to moderate, mostly requesting clarification of methodological questions. Since the manuscript includes data from 30 different published and unpublished studies, it was difficult to make all data fully uniform across different methods. The reviewers were also very pleased reading the manuscript and appreciated the work. I would also like to mention the detailed edits from the editor, which helped improve the manuscript’s format.
How did you find the process overall? The whole process was long and challenging, but the result is very fulfilling. I have a long co-author list, and all of them were very supportive from data collection to editing. I learned a lot and enjoyed the whole process. It was not easy to narrow down this huge dataset and summarize the overall story. Overall, I enjoyed it a lot and am really happy with the publication.
THE TAKE-HOME ADVICE
My “take-home” advice would be: embrace life’s surprises, be grateful for what you have, stay open to possibilities, and treat life like an adventure.
THE PAPER
Ahmed, F., Leu, E., Juhl, A., Campbell, K., Dilliplaine, K., Assmy, P., Niemi, A., Gradinger, R., Alou-Font, E., Torres-Valdés, S., Whitmore, L., Jones, E. M., Fransson, A., Chierici, M., Olsen, L. M., McKay, R., Lee, S.H., Oggier, M., Lange, B.A., Tremblay, JÉ., Gosselin, M., and Mundy, C.J. (2025). A pan-Arctic perspective on the influence of ice algae on sea-ice nutrient concentrations. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene. https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.2025.00059
CONTACT
Fowzia Ahmed, Ph.D. Student
Centre for Earth Observation Science (CEOS)
University of Manitoba
ahmedf6@myumanitoba.ca