IMCS News || 15 Septembert 2009

October 31st, 2009

Highlights

After being at sea for 203 days and traveling over 7300 Kms, RU27 "Scarlet Knight" has reached its goal of arriving into European waters! Congratulations to Scott Glenn, Oscar Schofield, Josh Kohut and everyone in the COOL Room (students, engineers and technicians) for leading this historic first trans-Atlantic glider crossing. Plans are to pick up the first week of December in Spanish waters and to celebrate the achievement in Baiona, Spain, on 9 December. Congratulations again to all in the COOL on this important achievement!

2009 Award from NOAA and NERRS: It is a pleasure to report that Mike Kennish received the 2009 award from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Estuarine Research Reserve Association for outstanding contributions to the National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERRS). The award was presented to Mike at the annual meeting of the NERRS held in San Diego last week. Mike was recognized for his research and public outreach on human impacts to coastal systems including watershed development, habitat loss and alteration, nutrient enrichment and eutrophication. Regional and national contributions were noted including ecosystem assessment and remediation for the Barnegat Bay, publication of several special issues of journals such as the Journal of Coastal Research devoted to estuarine ecosystem studies, and his efforts to develop new measures of assessment for estuarine and marine waters with state and federal resource management agencies.
Mike has made it his mission to ensure the effects of global climate change and the eutrophication of the Barnegat Bay are recognized and mitigated through changes in environmental policy and better planning in the communities surrounding the Bay and its tributaries.

Meetings Attended

Melanie Reding, Education Coordinator for the Cousteau Reserve received a fellowship award to participate in the 2009 Whole Thinking Retreat, an elite 6-day forum for educational, environmental and social leaders. Retreats focus a broad range of perspectives on contemporary policy issues.
As part of World Water Monitoring Day, Melanie Reding traced the flow of water through the Great Bay Estuary for area students. Held at Wharton State Forest, the event was a real educational soaker. Read the full article at: http://www.app.com/article/20091015/NEWS/910160333/1070/NEWS02/Area+students+get+lesson+in+World+Water+Monitoring+Day
Several webinars were delivered by the Cousteau Reserve including "Clean Energy Incentives for Municipalities," and a beta test of a new "Stormwater Management Information System." The latter features a suite of internet-based geospatial tools to display, assess and analyze data for stormwater and sediment control, planning, permitting, management and mitigation. This new on-line decision support tool will go live shortly.
The Cousteau Reserve will sponsor a workshop on regional impacts of climate change on Barnegat Bay and other New Jersey estuaries on February 11, 2010, at Tuckerton. Municipal leaders, resource managers, engineers, and scientists will help identify the best available adaptation tools and strategies. Workshop partners include the Barnegat Bay National Estuary Program, N.J. Coastal Management Office, and Monmouth University.
Lisa Auermuller received the 2009 Outstanding Floodplain Management Award from the N.J. Association of Floodplain Management for training programs she developed to support science-based decision-making on coastal issues and floodplain management in New Jersey. Past award winners include former Acting Governor Richard Codey and DEP Commissioner Lisa Jackson.
Peter Rona presented an invited lecture, Ocean Exploration From The Shore to The Solar System, at the New Jersey Science Convention at the Garden State Convention Center in Somerset on October 13th. He had the opportunity to meet with high school science teachers of students that are now at Rutgers in his Introduction to Oceanography course and encourage the teachers to continue sending students to Rutgers to study marine sciences.
Liz Sikes, Michelle Hardee and Aurora Elmore traveled to New Zealand to capture the austral spring conditions in the Southern Ocean. They were aboard the New Zealand Research vessel R/V Tangaroa from Oct 25-Nov 1. They are working with colleagues at New Zealand’s national oceanographic research organisation, NIWA (www.niwa.co.nz), led by Dr. Scott Nodder. This is the third in a series of cruises where they return to the Chatham Rise to look at phytoplankton growth in different seasons to coordinate with a long term environmental monitoring project that NIWA has sustained for several years using two sediment trap moorings that straddle the Rise. The report of the cruise on our departmental weblog site: http://marine.rutgers.edu/main/blog/?cat=10

New Grants

Curchitser, E. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Tightly Coupled Dynamic End-to-End Marine Ecosystem Models. 9/10/09-9/30/2010 ($56,876)
DeLuca, M. Consortium for Ocean Leadership, 10th Annual Shore Bowl Competition. 9/25/09-6/30/10 ($14,000)

Publications

Francis, J.A., W. Chan, D.J. Leathers, J.R. Miller, D,E, Vernon. 2009. Winter northern hemisphere weather patterns remember summer Arctic sea-ice extent. Geophysical Research Letter. Vol. 36 L0750, doi: 10.1029/2009GL037274.
Guo, X., Y. Wang, Z. Xu and H. Yang. 2009. Chromosome set manipulation in shellfish. Pp 165 - 195 in: New Technologies in Aquaculture: Improving Production Efficiency, Quality and Environmental management, G. Burnell and G. Allan (eds). Woodhead Publishing.
Kucuktas, H., S. Wang, P. Li, C. He, P. Xu, Z. Sha, H. Liu, Y. Jiang, P. Baoprasertkul, B. Somridhivej, Y. Wang, J. Abernathy, X. Guo, L. Liu, W. Muir & Z. Liu. 2009. Construction of genetic linkage maps and comparative genome analysis of catfish using gene-associated markers . Genetics, Genetics 181: 1649-1660.
Liu, X., F. Wu, H. Zhao, G. Zhang and X. Guo. 2009. A novel shell color variant of the Pacific abalone Haliotis discus hannai Ino subject to genetic control and dietary influence. Journal Shellfish Reseach 28(2):419-424.
Ramey, P.A, J.P. Grassle, J.F. Grassle, and R.M. Petrecca. (2009) Small-scale, patchy distributions of infauna in hydrodynamically
mobile continental shelf sands: Do ripple crests and troughs support different communities? Continental Shelf Research. doi:10.1016/j.csr.2009.08.020.
Ren, J., X. Liu, G. Zhang, B. Liu and X. Guo. 2009. "Tandem duplication-random loss" is not a real feature of oyster mitochondrial genomes. BMC Genomics, 10:84.
Robock, A., A.B. Marquardt, B. Kravitz, and G. Stenchikov, 2009: The benefits, risks, and costs of stratospheric geoengineering. Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L19703, doi:10.1029/2009GL039209. (Featured as a Research Highlight in Nature Reports Climate Change)
Shi, Y., Y. Wang, K. Hong, Z. Hou, A. Wang and X. Guo. 2009. Characterization of 31 EST-derived microsatellite markers for the pearl oyster Pinctada martensii (Dunker). Molecular Ecology Resources 9:177-179.
Shi, Y., H. Kui, X. Guo, Z. Gu, Y. Wang and A. Wang. 2009. Genetic linkage map of the pearl oyster, Pinctada martensii (Dunker). Aquatic Research doi:10.1111/j.1365-2109.2009.02299.x
Wang, L, L. Song, J. Zhao, L. Qiu, H. Zhang, W. Xu, H. Li, C. Li, L. Wu, and X. Guo. Expressed sequence tags from the zhikong scallop (Chlamys farreri): Discovery and annotation of host-defense genes. Fish & Shellfish Immunology 26: 744-750.
Skific, N., J.A. Francis, J.J. Cassano. 2009. Attribution of projected changes in atmospheric moisture transport in the Arctic: A self-organizing map perspective. American Meteorlogical Society. DOI: 10.1175/2009JCLI2645.1
Skific, N., J.A. Francis, J.J. Cassano. 2009. Attribution of seasonal and regional changes in Arctic moisture convergence. American Meteorological Society. DOI: 10.1175/2009JCLI2829.1
Smith, L.M., and J.R. Reinfelder (2009), Mercury volatilization from salt marsh sediments, J. Geophys. Res., 114, G00C09, doi:10.1029/2009JG000979.
Wang, Y., Y. Shi and X. Guo. 2009. Identification and characterization of 66 EST-SSR markers in the eastern oyster Crassostrea virginica (Gmelin). Journal of Shellfish Research, 28(2):227-234.
Yoshimori, M., and A.J. Broccoli. 2009: On the link between Hadley circulation changes and radiative feedback processes. Geophys. Res. Lett., in press.
Wang, Y., A. Wang and X. Guo. 2009. Development and characterization of 30 polymorphic microsatellite markers for the Atlantic surfclam, Spisula solidissima (Dillwyn, 1817). Molecular Ecology Research, 9(4):1264-1267.
Xu, F. G. Zhang, X. Liu, S. Zhang, B. Shi and X. Guo. 2009. Laboratory hybridization between Crassostrea ariakensis and C. sikamea. Journal Shellfish Research 28(3):453-458.

Student News

Hi all,
I'd like to take some time on Monday (16 Nov) to acknowledge and celebrate a few members of the lab---Wanjing successfully defended her masters thesis and it is one of Assaf's last physical days at Rutgers. Please join us in Rm203 now to celebrate accomplishments, friendships, and futures over desserts, coffee, tea, etc. (Kay Bidle)

Tanya Mendes Silveira bids farewell to Rutgers and the Sandy Hook Cooperative Research Programs after nearly two years. Tanya came to Rutgers with a bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree in Geology from the University of Lisbon, Portugal. After visiting IMCS/Rutgers under a Luso-American Development Foundation scholarship for two weeks in July, 2006, Tanya returned in January 2008 as a co-worker with Norb Psuty on a variety of projects sponsored by the National Park Service and the Jacques Cousteau National Estuarine Research Reserve. Her knowledge of coastal geomorphology and skills with ArcGIS were quickly applied to issues of regional sediment budget calculations, coastal dune processes and evolution, resource management, and various aspects of creating protocols for coastal monitoring in four of the US coastal national parks. With a dedication to rigorous data collection and data management, Tanya has worked with Norb to create several major National Park Service publications on the protocols for coastal monitoring and has managed to make presentations at a variety of professional meetings as well as pen a number of refereed publications (see list below). Tanya’s dedication to the tasks at hand and her tireless devotion to professionalism in all aspects of her performance have earned high praise from her co-workers and from the Park administrators who are benefitting from her efforts. Tanya will be returning to Portugal where she plans to pursue a Ph.D. in Geology at the University of Lisbon. She intends to apply some of the experience she has gained at Rutgers University in the generation of her dissertation topic. Click here to access CV.

Let's Welcome

Congratulations

Born Oct 28, 2009 at 4:21 pm EST. 6 lb. 2oz, 18.5 inches. Healthy and happy,
Elisa Sofia Taegar was breastfeeding within 10 minutes of birth. Isaac is very proud of his baby sister. Maria and baby are doing well and may come to visit IMCS in a month. The whole family is thrilled and wants to share their joy with you.
Thank you!

Dove

Upcoming Events

Alan Robock
Presentations:
Invited talk: University of Wisconsin, Madison, September 25, 2009 (On "Smoke and Mirrors: Is Geoengineering a Solution to Global Warming?")

Publications:

Service:
1. 9/15/09 Our reconstruction of past volcanic eruptions in a format that can be used to drive climate models, based on a paper by Gao et al. (2008), has been permanently archived at the NOAA World Data Center for Paleoclimatology, http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/forcing.html

2. 9/18/09 quoted in Counterpunch article by Jason Mark, "Hacking the Sky," http://www.counterpunch.org/mark09182009.html

3. 9/19/09 quoted in the Richmond Times-Dispatch article, "Geoengineering: manmade fixes for climate change," http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/lifestyles/health_med_fit/article/I-ENGI0827_20090917-211611/293669/

4. 9/23/09 23 minute interview about geoengineering on Radio Ecoshock. This program starts in Vancouver at CFRO on Friday, then to the other 15 college and community stations during the week. The interview will also be featured separately on KKGN Green 960 Radio in San Francisco, over the next few weeks. http://www.ecoshock.org/downloads/climate09/ES_Robock_Geoengineering_LoFi.mp3

5. 10/1-3/09 attended (by invitation) American Geophysical Union "The New AGU, A Forum on the Future," Washington, DC.

6. 10/6/09 quoted in article about geoengineering, "A New Earth," by Dan Cloer in Vision, http://www.vision.org/visionmedia/article.aspx?id=18199

7. 10/7/09 quoted in article about geoengineering, "Potential of geoengineering highly uncertain," by Janet Pelley in Environmental Science and Technology, DOI: 10.1021/es902776s, http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es902776s

8. 10/7/09 article about my work on the Toba volcanic eruption, "Supervolcanoes: a cause of a deep freeze or just a cold spell?," by Mary Caperton Morton in Earth, vol. 54, no. 9, p. 19.

1. Tan, Y., Perri, M. J., Seitzinger, S. P., Turpin, B. J. (2009) Effects of precursor concentration and acidic sulfate in aqueous glyoxal– OH radical oxidation and implications for secondary organic aerosol, Environ. Sci. Technol., in press.

3. Altieri, K., Turpin, B. J., Seitzinger, S. P. (2009) The composition of dissolved organic nitrogen in continental precipitation investigated by ultra-high resolution FT-ICR mass spectrometry, Environ. Sci. Technol., advance on line publication, doi: 10.1021/es9007849.

4. Altieri, K. E., Turpin, B. J., Seitzinger, S. P. (2009) Oligomers, organosulfates, and nitrooxy organosulfates in rainwater identified by ultra-high resolution electrospray ionization FT-ICR mass spectrometry, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 9:2533-2542.