The recently completed resource assessment for ocean current energy (Haas et al. 2013) utilized fairly simplistic analytical methods to estimate the extractable energy from the Gulf Stream System as well as to analyze the relative impacts of large scale energy extraction. This level of analysis can be considered to be accurate to an order of magnitude and only provides an idea on the overall trends of the impacts of extraction. Much higher resolution modeling is required to accurately determine the overall impacts of extraction for both localized and far field effects.
The student will work jointly between the labs of Drs. Frank Stewart (Biological Sciences) and Kostas Konstantinidis (Biological Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering) to characterize a globally important marine bacterial group (SAR11). A collaboration between these labs recently described how SAR11, the world’s most abundant organismal group, has adapted to the unique chemical and physical environment of anoxic oxygen minimum zones (OMZs). This work (Tsementzi et al.
The effects of climate change on the coastal ocean include a decrease in riverine inputs and increase in salinity in estuaries with impacts on primary production, macrofauna, and sediment biogeochemistry that are poorly understood. One clear effect of the increase in salinity associated with the decrease in riverine discharge, however, is the enhanced coagulation of inorganic material further upriver. Flocculation of particulate material upriver will enhance its flux to the sediment and simultaneously decrease the outflux of particulate material to the continental shelf.
The urbanization of the coast is generating significant environmental issues, including increasing nutrient runoff that promotes eutrophication and hypoxic conditions in estuaries. At the same time, the excessive input of nutrients is also responsible for an increase acidification of coastal waters, as denitrification in sediments typically generates acidity.
CO2 emission will continue exaggerating, as fossil fuels will most likely remain the major source of energy in next couple decades. The increased carbon in the atmosphere moves into marine ecosystems, making the world’s oceans more acidic. The rate of ocean acidification (OA) today is faster than any time in the past 300 million years.
A large fraction of ocean variability on interannual and longer timescales is energized by random atmospheric weather, also referred to as climate "noise". Although the noise is random in time, spatially the atmospheric noise exhibits recurrent patterns, some of which are more efficient in triggering positive feedbacks between the ocean-atmosphere system or more generally amplifying the response of the ocean system. Noise patterns such as these, can trigger resonance in the climate system.