January 31, 2003

Highlights

• Sybil Seitzinger has been appointed to the NSF Biogeosciences Workgroup. Talk to Sybil if you want to know more about this new crosscutting program within NSF.
  
  
• Richard Lathrop, Director of the Walton Center for Remote Sensing & Spatial Analysis, received a $81,650 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for "Application of Airborne Remote Sensing for Submerged Aquatic Vegetation and Benthic Habitat Mapping in the Barnegat Bay-Little Egg Harbor Estuary." The project is funded through the Barnegat Bay Estuary Program and will be conducted in collaboration with Ken Able and Mike Kennish of the RU Institute of Marine & Coastal Sciences and the Jacques Cousteau National Estuarine Research Reserve.
  
  
• Jim Ammerman and Zbigniew Kolber will receive support ($376k) from the NOAA Coastal Ocean Program for a new project entitled "N-GOMEX 2002: Seasonal Mapping of Productivity and Nutrient Limitation." This project includes three 5-day cruises in the area of the Mississippi River Plume and Louisiana coast in the spring and summer of 2004.
  
  
• Karl Nordstrom was in Italy, January 9 to 20, where he participated in a field study of a beach nourishment project using marble from Tuscan quarries. His next field project is a 30-day study of aeolian transport across high and low sections of protective dunes at Ocean City, New Jersey in February and March. He then travels to Zürich to participate in a conference on the environmental future of aquatic ecosystems to be held the end of March.

Meetings Attended

• Ken Able was a keynote speaker at the recent 5th International Flatfish Symposium, Isle of Man, 3-7 November 2002. The title of his plenary address was "The role of habitat in flatfish ecology: Factors affecting dynamic habitat use."
  
  
• Dr. Gochfeld was an invited speaker at the SCOPE/IUPAC International Symposium on Endocrine Active Substances in Yokahama, Japan. Nov 17, 2002. His topic: "Why Epidemiology Warrants the Precautionary Principle." SCOPE is the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment. IUPAC is the International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry.
  
  
• Michael Gochfeld participated in two symposia at the Society for Risk Analysis, presenting papers on "Balancing Risks: Hazardous Waste Work may protect rather than jeopardize workers" and "Balancing risks of fish-consumption: cesiusm-137 and mercury risks."
  
  
• Sybil Seitzinger attended the IGBP Oceans workshop in Paris, France, January 4th-10th. The purpose of the meeting was to obtain input from the broader scientific community on the new IGBP Oceans initiative. Sybil presented her research on “Global Models of Nutrient Export from WaterSheds to Coastal Ecosystems (Global NEWS).”
  
  
• Qizhong (George) Guo attended the Second International Workshop on Coastal Eutrophication held in Tianjin, China, November 21-24, 2002 (http://202.113.13.99/orgs/cfd/) and presented a paper titled "Variability of Net Mass Transport through Estuary-Ocean and Estuary-Marsh Boundaries." He also chaired a discussion session on restoration of the Bo Hai Bay ecosystem.
  
  
• Peter Rona co-chaired session, "Ocean Eddies, Mixing and Turbulence," at the Fall AGU Meeting in San Francisco on December 6th. He co-authored two presentations with Karen Bemis and co-PIs from the Applied Physics Lab- University of Washington and JAMSTEC (Japan Marine Technology Center) on recent results of their acoustic imaging of seafloor hydrothermal plumes and diffuse flow.
  
  
• Peter Rona gave an invited lecture on scientific advances in marine mineralization processes at the 20th Anniversary Celebration of the signing of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) at UN Headquarters in New York on December 9th.
  
  
• In December, Judith Weis participated in a workshop at the Liberty Science Center in which they invited scientists for input into their proposed new exhibit on the Hudson River, to be called "Our Hudson Home" which will be ready in a few years. The planned exhibit will cover the ecosystem from its origins down to the NY/NJ harbor, and will also deal with fisheries and contamination issues.

Publications

• Kay D. Bidle, Manganelli, M., and Azam, F. "Regulation of Oceanic Silicon and Carbon Preservation by Temperature Control on Bacteria." Science 2002 December 6; 298: 1980-1984.
  
  
• Norbert Psuty and Ofiara, D. Coastal Hazard Management-Lessons and Future Directions from New Jersey. Rutgers University Press 2002
  
  
• Lutz, R.L., Shank, T., Rona, P., Reed, A., Allen, C., Lange, W., Low, S., and Kristof, E. Recent advances in imaging deep-sea hydrothermal vents, Cah. Biol. Mar., 43:267-269. 2002.
  
  
• Peter A. Rona. Resources of the Sea Floor. Science, 299(5607): 673-674 (2003).
  
  
• Peter Rona has an invited article on the subject of resources of the seafloor in the January 31 issue of "Science."

Let's Welcome...

• My name is Corinne Dalelio, and I am the new Program Coordinator for the Jacques Cousteau National Estuarine Research Reserve. In addition to helping with the logistics and management of the various fundraising efforts, education programs and public events associated with the JC NERR and the JC Coastal Education Center, my main responsibilities will include the research and maintenance involved with the content for the websites for and related to the JC NERR website and for workshop and program materials. I graduated from Rutgers in May of 2001 with a BA in English and a minor in Psychology, and have spent the last year working for the international division of an industrial publishing company in New York, maintaining their websites and advertising materials. (Room 104, Ext. 374)
  
  
• Dyke Andreasen-- I'm interested in changes in the earth's climatology and oceanography from a geological perspective with an emphasis on the most recent 5 million years. In particular, I study the dynamics of ocean-atmosphere interactions using information garnered from the fossil record recovered from marine sediments and computer models. (Room 114F, Ext. 549)
  
  
• Naomi Fleming-- I have a B.S. (Physics) and have just completed an M.S. (Geophsyics) at the University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. My Master's thesis was looking at an internal tide found off the northeast coast of NZ using data from an ADCP and thermistor mooring. I am here to begin a Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography (Advisor: John Wilkin) and my research interests are in coastal observational oceanography. (Room 214A , Ext. 253)
  
  
• My name is Tara Sinclair, I am in room 104I. I joined the Institute in November 2002 as an Administrative Assistant. If you haven't met me already, you will if you have any issues with accounting, recruiting or international visa affairs. Before I came here, I worked as a librarian, an accountant and as an administrative support person. Come by and say hello some time- I'd be glad to meet you. (Ext. 520)
  
  
• John Harrison-- I'm coming from Stanford University's Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, where I did my doctoral work on the transport and transformation of nitrogen in Mexican streams. Here at IMCS, I'll be working with Sybil Seitzinger, developing a global, multi-element model for predicting nutrient export from watersheds to the coastal zone. (Room 205F, Ext. 203)