Marco Sandoval Belmar

I am Marco Sandoval Belmar (Sandoval-Belmar), a geophysicist from the Universidad de Concepción (Chile, 2018) and a PhD graduate in Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences from UCLA (2025). My research lies at the intersection of physical oceanography, biogeochemistry, and ecosystem dynamics, with a focus on Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) and domoic acid (DA) production along the California coast.

My PhD thesis, “Examining the interplay between terrestrial nutrient inputs and Harmful Algal Blooms in the California Current,” combined observations and 3D high-resolution modeling. I studied:

• Long-term in situ records of domoic acid in California coastal waters,

• Development of a novel DA production model in the Southern California Bight, and

• Impacts of land-based nutrient inputs and San Francisco Bay outflow on biogeochemistry and HAB risk in the San Francisco–Monterey Bay region.

I have expertise in numerical modeling (ROMS-BEC), data analysis, and computational tools (MATLAB, Python, R, Bash), and I aim to apply these skills to better understand and predict the links between terrestrial inputs and coastal ecosystem health.