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May
31, 2005
Highlights
- Over 40 friends of the Rutgers Pinelands Field Station gathered
in celebration on May 26 to recognize two award recipients and
to dedicate the new dormitory.
In his opening remarks, Fred Grassle noted that John Dighton,
director of the Pinelands Field Station had received the Graduate
School – New Brunswick –Faculty Teaching Award.
John then awarded the Ralph E. Good Award to masters candidate
Don Brickner. Bobby Zampella, member of the Pinelands Commission
and the Research Station Advisory Board spoke of his mentor,
Ralph Good, and Dr. Norma Good, widow of the former professor
and director of the Station, cut the ribbon on the dormitory,
which will bear his name. Margaret Marsh, dean of the Faculty
of Arts and Sciences at Camden, concluded the program with her
remarks. Attendees included faculty, staff, students, members
of the Pinelands Commission and Advisory Board as well as alumni
and other friends of the Pinelands Station. Staff offered tours
of the research sites and laboratory. Photos courtesy of Liz
Creed.
   
- Sybil Seitzinger is a recipient of the 2005 NOAA Administrator’s
Award for her international leadership in the development and
application of cutting-edge biogeochemical science to the global-scale
assessment of excessive nitrogen loading in coastal waters. The
award was presented by Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Jr., Vice Admiral,
U.S. Navy (Ret.), Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere.
- Peter Rona addressed a group of enthusiastic teachers on discovering
seafloor hydrothermal vents at a NOAA Ocean Exploration teacher
training workshop held June 4th at the New England Aquarium in
Boston. The controversy over the Rutgers IMAX film, Volcanoes
of the Deep Sea, keeps churning with an article entitled,
Creationist Wave Hits Volcanoes of the Deep Sea, in the June issue
of, Physics Today. The bottom line of the article is that IMAX
theaters that have declined to show the film for creationist reasons
are censoring science.
- Alan Robock served as a judge for the Young Scientists` Outstanding
Poster Paper Award at the 2005 European Geophysics Union meeting
in Vienna, Austria, April 24-29, 2005.
- Alan Robock has been appointed to be a member of the Technical
Committee on Remote Sensing and Data Assimilation in Hydrology
of the European Geophysics Union.
- Lily Young served on an NSF Biogeoscience Panel, May 3-4, 2005,
which reviewed 81 proposals for this year's competition.
- A photograph by Alan Robock of the Mt. Erebus volcano on Ross
Island, Antarctica, has been chosen for inclusion in the 2006
Volcano Calendar, a project of the International Association of
Volcanism and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior. You can see the
photo at: http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/Antarctica/ErebusIceRidgeD9.22.04FeelingLucky.jpg
The caption is, "Mt. Erebus, Ross Island, Antarctica.
Photo taken from sea ice off the west coast of Ross Island. On
this day, the weather produced a capping cloud shrouding the mountain
and a spectacular lenticularis stack of clouds in the lee. Photograph
© Alan Robock, Sept. 22, 2004."
- Joanna Burger and Michael Gochfeld made a presentation to the
board of the Jersey Coast Anglers Association to elicit cooperation
in collecting samples of recreationally-caught ocean fish for
contaminant analysis.
- John Dighton was part of a group of Rutgers delegates to visit
the Prince of Songkla University in Hat Yai, Thailand May 15-21
to discuss potential links between the two universities and to
survey damage caused by the tsunami.
- The second meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Coastal Ocean Observing
Regional Association (MACOORA) was held May 17-18 at the University
of Delaware. Scott Glenn was one of the meeting organizers and
spoke on Identifying Pilot Projects and Ocean.US Surface Current
Mapping Initiative. Fred Grassle also attended. The meeting had
a broad and diverse representation from government, industry,
and academia from across the region. MACOORA is now on track to
propose a MACOORA pilot project involving the region's high frequency
radar system and to become an approved association by the end
of the year.
Meetings Attended
- John Dighton and two of his students attended the Soil Ecology
Society conference ‘Linkages in Soil Ecology’ at the
Argonne National Labs in Illinois, May 21-25 where Don Brickner
presented a paper ‘Prescribed fire effects on soil processes
and below-ground carbon storage in a New Jersey pine barrens pine-oak
forest,’ Dennis Gray a paper ‘Mineralization of forest
litter nutrients by combustion’ and John helped judge student
presentations and posters.
- Alan Robock presented the following talks:
- Evaluation of Reanalysis Soil Moisture Simulations Using
Newly Updated Soil Moisture Observations from the Ukraine
and China (invited presentation; with H. Li, M. Mu, and K.
Y. Vinnikov; European Geosciences Union General Assembly,
Vienna, Austria, April 24-29, 2005. Also served as session
chair.
- The impact of water table dynamics on climate (with G.
Miguez-Macho, Y. Fan, and C. P. Weaver; presented by G. Miguez-Macho;
European Geosciences Union General Assembly, Vienna, Austria,
April 24-29, 2005)
- Alan Robock presented the following invited talks:
- Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, UK Met
Office, Exeter, England, May 10, 2005 (On "Evaluation
of Reanalysis Soil Moisture Simulations Using Newly Updated
Soil Moisture Observations from the Ukraine and China")
- Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, UK Met
Office, Exeter, England, May 11, 2005 (On "Comparing
Climatic Response of Low and High Latitude Volcanic Eruptions")
- Totten, L.A.and Du, S. Atmospheric PCB Sources in the Philadelphia
Metro Area. SETAC Hudson-Delaware Chapter Regional Meeting, April
28, 2005.
- Qizhong (George) Guo presented a paper at the World Water &
Environmental Resources Congress in Anchorage, Alaska on May 17,
2005. The title of his paper is "Development of adjustment
and scaling factors for measured
suspended solids removal performance of stormwater hydrodynamic
treatment devices."
New Grants
- Impacts of Shoreline Change on Park Infrastructure, Sandy Hook
Unit Gateway National Recreation Area. National Park Service.
10/1/04-9/30/08, $41,160. Norbert P. Psuty.
- Source apportionment of organic contaminants in the NY/NJ Harbor
Estuary. Hudson River Foundation. 7/1/2005-8/31/2006, $95,300.
L.A. Totten and D.E. Fennell.
- Dissolved Organic Phosphorus: Quantifying Taxon-specific Rates
of Hydrolysis and Uptake. National Science Foundation. 5/15/05-4/30/06,
$181,907. James Ammerman.
- Analyzing patterns of increase of American eel (Anguilla
rostrata) glass stages. Atlantic States Marine Fisheries
Commission. 3/15/05-9/15/05, $10,630. Ken Able.
Publications
- Jiang, L., O. Schofield, and P. Falkowski. Adaptive Evolution
of Phytoplankton Cell Size. American Naturalist, accepted.
- Harrison, J.H., N.F. Caraco, and S.P Seitzinger. Global patterns
and sources of dissolved organic matter export to the coastal
zone: results from a spatially explicit, global model. Global
Biogeochemical Cycles, accepted.
- Glibert, P.M., S.P. Seitzinger, C.A. Heil, J. Burkholder, M.
Parrow, L.A. Codispoti, and V. Kelly. Eutrophication - new perspectives
on its role in the global proliferation of HABs. Oceanography,
accepted.
- Robock, Alan, 2005: Tonight as I stand inside the rain: Bob
Dylan and weather imagery. Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc., 86, 483-487.
[This article is currently featured as the Spotlight on the home
page of the American Meteorological Society at http://www.ametsoc.org/-
May 12, 2005. Can also be viewed at http://www.marine.rutgers.edu/~keng/IMCS_Newsletter/TonightAsIStandInsidetheRain.pdf.]
- Miguez-Macho, Gonzalo, Georgiy L. Stenchikov, and Alan Robock,
2005: Regional climate simulations over North America: Interaction
of local processes with improved large-scale flow. J. Climate,
18, 1227-1246.
- Li, Haibin, Alan Robock, Suxia Liu, Xingguo Mo, and Pedro Viterbo,
2005: Evaluation of reanalysis soil moisture simulations using
updated Chinese soil moisture observations. J. Hydrometeorol.,
6, 180-193.
- Hall, A., A. Clement, D. W. J. Thompson, A. Broccoli, and C.
Jackson. The importance of atmospheric dynamics in the Northern
Hemisphere wintertime climate response to changes in the earth's
orbit. J. Climate, 18, 1315-1325.
- John Dighton’s new book has just been published. Edited
by John Dighton, Jim White and Peter Oudemans. The Fungal Community:
Its Organization and Role in the Ecosystem (third edition). 2005,
CRC Press.
Student News
- RIOS - Research Internship in Ocean Sciences: Fourteen RIOS
students are settling into IMCS for a summer of research. Eight
of these students were selected from institutions all around the
USA and six were selected from Rutgers. During the first two weeks
students are carrying out a team research project and getting
started on their individual research projects in their mentor’s
labs.
This year’s RIOS students (and their mentors) are (from
bottom row l to r): Tucker Hirsch (Janice McDonnell and Lisa
Weiss), Chris Ballew (Trish Ramey and Judy Grassle), Anirban
Ghosh (Lee Kerkhof), James Bunkiewicz (Ken Able and Motz Grothues),
Adam Bohnert (Costa Vetriani), (center row l to r) Rachel Koehler
(John Quinlan), Sarah Edwards (Liz Sikes), Rachel Sargent (John
Quinlan and Mark Sullivan), Paige Roberts (Ken Able and Motz
Grothues), Alicia Manoski (Ken Able and Motz Grothues), (top
row l to r) Catherine Jedrzejczyk (Peter Rona and Karen Bemis),
Angelique Linares (Jim Ammerman), Alison Astalos (Mike Kennish),
and Katherine Piso (Gary Taghon and Char Fuller). The RIOS program
assistants are Clare Ng (Tuckerton) and Sara Bender (New Brunswick)
During a window of splendid weather on Friday, May 27 the team
project cruise took the students and their project leaders along
a cross-shelf transect to re-check the Hudson River outflows
that were the subject of the recent LATTE cruises (see John
Quinlan’s message of May 27: http://marine.rutgers.edu/~keng/IMCS_Newsletter/Quinlan_May27message.doc).
Data from the students’ cruise will be analyzed and presented
as a RIOS team poster at the final poster session on July 29,
together with all of the individual student posters. Please
save the date!
  
Erin Jackson (L). Bob Chant demonstrating
gravitational circulation in his “Estuary in a Box”
(C). John Quinlan and interns cruise the Hudson (R).
- In addition to the RIOS interns, IMCS is pleased to be hosting
two students in conjunction with Paul Jivoff of Rider University.
Paul is mentoring Harminy Liff and co-mentoring Melissa Tresselt
with Jackie Toth at RUMFS.
- Our CMER (Cooperative Marine Education and Research) interns
for summer of 2005 are Lindsay Church (Chris Chambers, mentor),
Kira Dacanay (Vince Guida, mentor), and Gregory Glassner (John
Manderson, mentor). These Rutgers students are working on their
research projects at the Howard Lab, Sandy Hook.
- Erin Jackson rounds out our group of twenty interns. Her research
will be conducted under the direction of Sybil Seitzinger.
Congratulations!
Lisa Weiss married Rob Auermuller on May 14th, 2005 at the Smithville
Inn in southern New Jersey. Lisa's new name is now Lisa Auermuller
and her email is: auermull@marine.rutgers.edu. Lisa and Rob are
in the process of purchasing a new home in Little Egg Harbor, NJ.
 
Let's Welcome
Lynn Demenchuk joined our staff in May as a Business Assistant.
When not busy at work with Marge and Susan, Lynn enjoys spending
time outdoors "down the shore" and playing golf and tennis.
Please feel free to drop by the front office and introduce yourself,
Lynn is in room 104H and her extension is 541.
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