OCEANOGRAPHY NEWSLETTER FALL 1999
Winchester: Thinking Globally, Acting Locally
During his sabbatical this past year, Dr. John Winchester stayed in Tallahassee and used his time to focus on scientific current events, which has allowed him to be better prepared for teaching his course on global change, a subject of great international importance and interest these days. Global Change, Its Scientific and Human Dimensions, which started out as an honors seminar for liberal studies, is now a popular class regularly offered for about 40 undergraduates with an honors section of 5 students. In 1995, Winchester won the Garnet, Gold and Green Award by Florida PIRG for promoting environmental awareness and protection at FSU, and in 1996 he received an FSU Teaching Incentive Program Award. Currently, Winchester also offers an honors seminar in Nuclear Technology and Global Change and an FSU President's Seminar on the future of basic science designed to give freshmen a big picture view of science. He is always finding new material for class, and this semester has added to the Global Change Course new segments on air pollution from a worldwide perspective and on the Human Genome program and its implications for health and world food supply.
In what ways is our world changing, how do those changes interact with each other, and how do changes relate to human development and influence? These are some of the issues discussed in Winchester's courses. Global change is a multifaceted current issue with many fluctuating variables and human perspectives. For instance, weather and climate affect everyone, and in turn, human activities affect the climate system. Thus, whole ecosystems may be altered by this interaction of atmospheric processes and human activities. These interactions have significant social, economic, and political implications. For this reason, it has become increasingly important to examine connections between fundamental scientific research on weather and climate and its broader social and environmental implications.
Political, social, and economic differences influence how countries look at the environment and pollution. "The U.S. and other developed nations are looking at the stratosphere and holes in the ozone layer, while developing nations must think about air pollution at home before they can worry about the stratosphere. This discrepancy raises the question, what are the issues here? How do cultural and economic differences affect how groups of people think about the environment? In the U.S., gasoline is cheap, so we drive bigger cars and have problems with urban smog; many developing countries have lower standards for emission control but are now working to raise them," said Winchester.
There are other issues of global change. "What is a biological issue anyway? Just the other day, there was an article on the front page of the Democrat talking about the Human Genome Program. Another big issue may be altering the genetic composition of agricultural products. There is an added human dimension to food biotechnology when you consider how other countries feel about companies producing genetically modified crops," Winchester said. What are the ultimate consequences of deforestation on the atmosphere? How does decimation of species affect biodiversity and natural selection? How does sea-level rise impact agriculture and population? How can we manage sustainable development? What is the relationship between environmental change and population growth? The list of questions is long but they stem from the big question: How do changes in population, technology, and socio-cultural and socio-economic organization, or human driven forces, affect the changes in our biosphere? Winchester, in teaching his honors seminar on nuclear technology and global change, adds problems related to nuclear weapons, world energy, and radioactive waste management. He will be teaching both the Global Change and the Nuclear Technology courses at the FSU London Study Center in the spring of 2000.
Since Winchester came from the University of Michigan to chair the Department of Oceanography in 1970, he has watched the department grow into one of the top ten in its field. "When I first arrived, there was no permanent space, the department was located in temporary World War II Mabry buildings in the present parking lot and scattered in other buildings around campus. Since then, with the help of Dean Lawton, we were able to move everyone into the OSB. We have many prominent people in the department now who have been given international recognition for excellence," Winchester said.
Winchester received his Ph.D. in physical and nuclear chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). After graduating in 1955 and spending a year in Amsterdam, Netherlands, as a Fulbright grantee, he was hired by the M.I.T. Department of Geology and Geophysics as Assistant Professor of Geochemistry. During his ten years there, Winchester made use of nuclear chemical techniques of analysis, especially neutron activation analysis of geological, oceanographic, and atmospheric chemical materials. He then joined the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor at the Department of Meteorology and Oceanography and continued his research in nuclear chemistry applications to the geosciences, using their nuclear reactor facility.
When he came to FSU, he initiated collaboration with Professor J.W. Nelson in the FSU Department of Physics Nuclear Research Facility and Van de Graaff Accelerator where they pioneered in applying the new technique of proton induced X-ray emission analysis. (Winchester coined the acronym PIXE that is in common use today). The Fourth International Conference on PIXE and its Analytical Applications was held at FSU in 1983.
Other collaborations around FSU have included the Departments of Geology, Meteorology, Movement Science/Physiology, and even the FSU Museum of Fine Art. "One great thing about being at FSU is the opportunity for good collaborations on campus with people in different disciplines," Winchester said. In 1989, after returning from a research project in Russia, Winchester needed a translator of important articles on the disappearing Aral Sea. He contacted the FSU Department of Modern Languages and found a student who was able to complete her Russian language study as part of Winchester's team. Another time he used a Robert Bateman book of nature paintings in his global change class that elicited great interest by the students. Through coordination with Museum of Fine Art, Bateman was invited to FSU, gave a public lecture, and opened a 6-week exhibit of his artworks at the museum.
Winchester's research specialty is atmospheric chemistry, measuring air composition at different locations around the world. His publications report aerosol composition determined in the lab by PIXE as well as by ion chromatography, making use of specially designed miniature air sampling equipment that can be simply deployed in remote field locations. Winchester won one of the first awards by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences to initiate scientific collaborations with China in 1980, soon after U.S. recognition. In one airline-checked bag he took enough of this equipment to China to carry out a three-month study in northern and remote northwestern locations! Currently, Winchester makes extensive use of multivariate statistical methods to infer atmospheric processes from measured chemical and other atmospheric data. The results have great relevance to problems like air pollution, acid rain, oceanic nutrient levels, and respiratory disease, which leads ultimately back to the issue of the human dimension of global change.
Thistle Elected to the AAAS
In September, Dr. David Thistle was among the 283 members elected by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Council as Fellows of AAAS. Thistle will be recognized for his contributions to science at the Fellows Forum to be held on February 19, 2000 during the AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.
Fellows of the AAAS are recognized for their efforts toward advancing science or fostering applications that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished. Thistle was honored specifically for his research in deep-sea biology and marine community ecology, as well as for administrative service. Thistle has been the department chair since 1994.
Founded in 1848, AAAS represents the world's largest federation of scientists and has more than 144,000 individual members. The Association publishes the weekly, peer-reviewed journal Science and administers EurekAlert!, the online news service featuring the latest discoveries in science, medicine and technology.
Dr. James O'Brien has been awarded the "Medal of Honor" from the Ocean University of QuinDao, China. Dr. O'Brien recently visited China as a member of a US/China bilateral meeting on ocean and climate which was held in Beijing in September of this year.
ON STAFF: Our Linda Carter...The Real Wonder Woman
If you want to know how to get something done around the department, chances are that you will go ask Linda. Operating from the central location of the main office, she serves as head psychologist, money exchanger, hostess, consultant, maid, and local mother figure for kids age 18-70 (a.k.a. Coordinator of Administrative Services). If you ask her, she will tell you that she is simply a "burned out phys-ed. teacher," but around here, we suspect that she is a superhero in disguise, for, according to Jim Winne, "her savvy and professionalism has saved the department and individual grants thousands of dollars that otherwise would have left our supply." Indeed, as Bill Burnett put it, "Linda is a chair's best friend, an organizer, a perfect right-hand (wo)man." David Thistle remarked, "It must have been possible to run the department in the absence of Linda Carter, but I don't exactly see how. She works very hard on our behalf (I sometimes find her here on weekends). She knows the university so well that her efficiency is incredible. She picks good people to work with her and creates an environment that produces loyal, long-serving, therefore very effective staff members. I wish I could take credit for hiring Linda, but I am tremendously pleased that I had the luck to work with her."
Linda has an uncanny ability to get things done despite the odds. Once, her notary public status came in handy when, with only two hours notice, she organized and performed the ceremony at an impromptu wedding in room 433 (OSB) for two graduate students from Beijing faced with spending their first weekend together.
Perhaps it is Linda's training in children's perceptual motor learning and team sports that helps her keep all the department kids in order. She received her bachelor's degree in education at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1969 and then went on to graduate school at the University of Colorado. She was past her comprehensive exams when she put family first and discontinued her studies, returning to the East Coast. She then taught physical education in New York and Virginia for a total of eight years. When Title 9 came out with mandated equal opportunity for women in sports, she had to start coaching high school varsity level sports, ranging from basketball to track and field. She said, "I fell completely in love with field hockey during that time."
After working at a private school where she was the only female physical education teacher, and thus had to coach all of the various sports (on her free time without reimbursement), she decided to take some time off and try something different.
She got a job in Washington, D. C., at the National Defense University, a graduate school for senior military officers and high-ranking state department officials, run by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the State Department. During the mid-eighties, she traveled with them from coast to coast coordinating courses in national security management (that's right, spy stuff!). Linda reminisced, that was a very exciting time. It was fascinating to work in D.C., you could do anything there if you had the skills and ambition."
While working in D.C., she met her husband, Frank, a now retired Captain in the U.S. Naval Reserve and currently Director of Security for the Florida Lottery, who eventually convinced her to join him in Tallahassee.
When she is not saving the day here at the department, Linda enjoys antiquarian book collecting, British comedies, and gardening. Incidentally, Linda happens to also be one of our departmental gardening experts, as while living in Virginia, she took the master gardener's course and ran a plant clinic at the library there for a couple of years.
Who are our hero's heroes? Linda's are William F. Buckley Jr., who she has admired since she was sixteen for his intellect and demeanor, and Jihayn Sadat of Egypt, who was outspoken for women's rights before and after her husband's assasination.
Linda said, "Teaching seems like 3 lifetimes ago." But we are glad that she is spending this lifetime here at the department, so we may have our very own wonder woman, the goddess of truth.
Around the Department:
Dava Dalton joined the oceanography staff to work for Dr. Kostka this fall (see page 4 for details).
Svetna Elsnor joins the grant administrative staff. She will be working with Dr. Dewar and will be taking Sheila Derby's position when she retires at the end of the year.
Marcheley Thompson is our new student assistant in the main office.
PARDON OUR DUST:
From the basement to the penthouse, the department has been going through a continuing series of renovation projects this year that will improve working conditions around the OSB. This spring the lower floors' air intake system received a thorough cleaning and refurbishing, which completed the building-wide air supply project that began in the upper floors in spring of 98.
With the help of a new construction manager the fourth floor renovations have been proceeding quickly as well. Late in the spring, the 4th floor renovation, expanding the number of offices on the side of the east stairwell (suite 404, an area previously known as 'the bowling alley'), was completed. Construction then moved into room 440, which will become the new home for our network hub and fourth floor printers. This project is nearing completion as we prepare for the next site, the 5th floor and roof, already in progress.
The 5th floor north facing offices will have insulated paneling added to the walls to help with the winter heating problem. The OSB will also get a new roof with insulation and covered walkways from stairwell to penthouse doors. This construction will begin in conjunction with installation of fume hood stack to be installed in penthouse roof. The penthouse itself will also be upgraded to real laboratory. Jim Winne is the department's coordinator and representative on building concerns and has been alerting everybody@osb to the ongoing status of the construction.
NEW DEPARTMENT MEMBERS:
The department is pleased to welcome on board Dr. Joel Kostka and Dr. Kevin Speer, two new faculty members, and Dr. Sophie Wacongne, an associate scholar/scientist. Dr. Kostka is from the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography in Savannah, Georgia and is the department's "bridge" faculty member between biological oceanography and marine chemistry. His new lab, located on the 5th floor of the OSB, is now fully operational. Dr. Speer joins our physical oceanography group from the Laboratoire de Physique des Océans, IFREMER, Brest, France. Dr. Sophie Wacongne, also a physical oceanographer, joins us from the Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Brest, France. Read on for more information on their specific research interests.
Dr. Joel Kostka, a biogeochemist and microbial ecologist, is the department's link between biological and chemical oceanography. His specialty is microorganisms and processes occurring in soils and sediments, especially in wetland environments such as saltmarshes or flooded agricultural soils. The new Kostka laboratories on the fifth floor of the OSB are well equipped to study the microbial mediation of geochemical cycles.
Microbes are responsible for the majority of organic matter decomposition and nutrient remineralization in soils and sediments. Also, microbially mediated reactions associated with decomposition produce most of global greenhouse or climate-regulating gases and they limit the fate
and transport of chemical contaminants. Therefore, present research is directed at two areas: 1) The role of microbes in nutrient and carbon turnover in soils, sediments, and anoxic waters, and 2) Bioremediation, or using microbes to clean up chemical contaminants at waste sites. The importance of the former lies in limitation of primary production and eutrophication in marine environments and crop yield in agricultural soils. As for the latter, we are working with the EPA Superfund program and the Department of Energy to develop cheap and clean solutions for cleaning up toxic organic chemicals and heavy metals from highly contaminated waste sites.
Our field sites include the Satilla River and saltmarshes on Skidaway Island, Sapelo Island and a contaminated marsh near Brunswick, Georgia; rice fields in Nanjing, China; wheat fields near Purdue University in Indiana; waste sites associated with the DOE-NABIR program on bioremediation, and hydrothermal vents on the East Pacific Rise.
My closest collaborations at the moment are with Dr. Joseph Stucki, a soil chemist at the Univ. of Illinois, Dr. David Balkwill, a microbiologist in FSU- Biology, and Drs. Marc Frischer, Rick Jahnke, and Stuart Wakeham, all at the Skidaway Inst. of Oceanography.
The Kostka laboratory is specifically designed for studies of sediment biogeochemistry and the physiology of anaerobic bacteria. Research in the lab is currently funded by a number of agencies including the Department of Energy, the Sea Grant College Program (NOAA), the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Environmental Protection Agency (HSRC).
The laboratory is growing rapidly with several new undergraduate and graduate student positions currently available. The primary member of the Kostka Lab group is Dava Dalton, the laboratory manager. Dava has a bachelor's degree in biology from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Master's degree in microbiology from the University of Georgia. He has over 10 years of experience in microbiology and environmental science research. Haley Skelton has recently joined the group as an undergraduate lab assistant. Britta Gribsholt, a Ph.D. student in biology from the University of Southern Denmark, will be a visiting scholar in the lab for the next several months. One Master's student, Bobby Sauer, is studying for his degree in Environmental Engineering through Dr. Kostka's adjunct appointment at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Dava Dalton working in the Kostka Lab
Dr. Kostka received his Ph.D. in marine science from the Marine Biology/Biochemistry Department at the University of Delaware in 1993. In addition to his FSU appointment, Dr. Kostka is an adjunct professor in the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Georgia-Marine Sciences and Microbiology Departments.
Dr. Kevin Speer joined the department's physical oceanography faculty this fall. His current research includes the Eurofloat and Arcane projects. Other current research deals with Southern Ocean overturning, e.g. the Deacon Cell, and its relation to air-sea fluxes and eddy transport mechanisms. Dr. Speer is also interested in hydrothermal vents, geothermal heat sources, and their effect on ocean circulation.
The Eurofloat project is designed to measure the circulation of Labrador Sea Water, whose core is at a depth of about 1800m, in the northeast area of the Atlantic Ocean - the region off the European continent. Arcane (Actions de recherché dans l'atlantique nord-est) is also a float project, centered at the level of the Mediterranean Water, or about 1000m depth. We are following about 50 subsurface floats, which cycle every three months from their assigned depth to the surface, where they radio data to the ARGOS center via satellite. Thus, we build up an image of the flow with new trajectories every 3 months. The most recent analyses are available at http://www.ifremer.fr/lpo/eurofloat/.
The Eurofloat is collaboration between scientists in England, Germany, Spain, and France, with support from the European Union, the French Navy, and other national agencies. Principal investigators are John Gould (coordinator), Walter Zenk, Ric Williams, Alan Cantos, and Alain Colin de Verdiere. Arcane is solely a French project, supported by IFREMER and the French Navy. The P.I. is Bernard LeCann at IFREMER.
Schematic
diagram of mid-ocean ridge, showing the seawater being heated by a magma
chamber. The heated water is emitted from the rift floor and rises to
form an anticyclonic hydrothermal plume. Ocean flow instability can cause
eddies to be shed from the anticyclone.
From: Speer, K.G. 1998. A new spin on hydrothermal plumes. Science, 280, 1034-1035.
Results so far show that the Labrador Sea water circulates to the south and west, like the wind-driven gyre above it, and unlike the classical theory of deep circulation. Also, there is a strong control on flow exerted by fracture zones in the mid-ocean ridge, with inflow through the Charlie-Gibbs Fracture Zone at 52 N, and outflow through the Oceanographer Fracture Zone near 35 N.
One of my principal goals is to get information about the deep interior (away from coasts) circulation, in order to test dynamical models of flow. One long-standing question in oceanography is the mechanism for the northward transport of salt into the arctic oceans, roundabout via the Gulf Stream or direct along the eastern boundary. We have found some evidence for an intermittent direct flow to the north, which has an impact on how one would represent the effect in climate models. More salt implies more northward heat transport and a milder European climate.
Dr. Speer received his Ph.D. in physical oceanography from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Oceanography in 1988.
Dr. Sophie Wacongne joined the department as an associate scholar/scientist. Her primary work at the department will include a new collaboration with Dr. Dewar and other members of the new Climate Institute in an effort focused on developing a new coupled ocean-atmosphere climate model to be used for climate predictions. Dr. Wacongne will also be working on completing her previous climateological and numerical studies.
I welcome this opportunity to strengthen my interest in climate research, by going from the study of ocean-only models to that of fully coupled atmosphere-ocean models.
Over the last years, my main research interest has been meridional oceanic heat transport and its seasonal variability. Understanding oceanic heat transport is important because, at least at low to middle latitudes, the ocean transports as much heat as the atmosphere and thus constitutes an essential element of the earth climate. It is well known that the relatively mild climate of northern Europe has a lot to do with the offshore presence of relatively warm water. On average, the Atlantic Ocean transports this warm water from lower latitudes to replenish cold water formed at higher latitudes and exported southward towards the rest of the World Ocean. Variations in the circulation responsible for this transport may thus induce variations in the climate of northern Europe and elsewhere, and are thus the subject of much research on climate change, mostly on inter-annual to decennial and longer time scales.
Before confidently extracting an inter-annual or longer-term variation from an oceanic signal, one must know and be able to filter out its variations at seasonal or shorter time scales. While this may be straightforward when long time series of the signal under study are available, it becomes problematic in the case of oceanic meridional heat transport, for which only snapshots exist of some of the parameters involved.
One must resort to studying climatologies of these parameters (built by sorting out and lumping together by month and location all available snapshots from various years). One can also study how heat transport varies seasonally in realistic numerical simulations of the oceanic circulation. I have been involved in both approaches. A while back, I studied seasonal heat transport in a numerical simulation of the tropical Indian Ocean (where seasonal reversals of the Monsoon winds cause spectacular reversals of the oceanic currents). More recently, I supervised a graduate student of Brest University, L.Crosnier, on a project concerning the Atlantic Ocean. She attempted to test whether the ocean density field, from which one component of the flow can be derived, undergoes seasonal variations that affect the net oceanic meridional heat transport.
Schematic of the
North Atlantic heat exchange.
For this she compared several climatologies of the temperature-salinity structure of the Atlantic Ocean and found that these did not properly resolve any seasonal cycle. In parallel, she studied a numerical simulation of the Atlantic Ocean, testing several decompositions of the net modeled heat transport, assessing the contribution of each component to the seasonal variation of the total, and investigating the mechanisms involved in the variations. This work constitutes her Ph.D.thesis, defended in the fall of 1998.
Dr. Wacongne received her Ph.D. in physical oceanography from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Oceanography in 1988.
PROJECT REPORTS & PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
Bouck, L. A., and D. Thistle. 1999. A computer-assisted method for producing illustrations for taxonomic descriptions. Vie et Milieu 49: 101-105.
Burnett, W.C., G. Schaefer, and M.K. Schultz. 1999. Fractionation of Ra-226 in Florida phosphogypsum. In: Environmental Radiochemical Analysis, (ed., G.W.A. Newton) Royal Society of Chemistry, Special Publication No. 2 1-20.
Corbett, D.R., J.P. Chanton, W. Burnett, K. Dillon, C. Rutkowski, and J. Fourqurean. 1999. Patterns of groundwater discharge into Florida Bay. Limnol. Oceanogr., 44, 1045-1055.
Dillon, K.S., D.R. Corbett, J.P. Chanton, W.C. Burnett, D.J. Furbish. 1999. The use of sulfur hexafluoride as a tracer of septic tank effluent in the Florida Keys. J. of Hydrolog., 220, 129-140.
Kostka, J.E., Haefele, E., Viehweger, R., and J.W. Stucki. 1999. Respiration and dissolution of Fe(III)-containing clay minerals by bacteria. Environ. Sci. and Technol. 33, 3127-3133.
Kostka, J.E., Thamdrup, B., Glud, R.N, and D.E. Canfield. 1999. Rates and pathways of carbon oxidation in permanently cold arctic sediments. Marine Ecol. Progr.Series, 180, 7-21.
Pennock, J. R., J. N. Boyer, J. A. Herrera-Silveira, R. L. Iverson, T. E. Whitledge, B. Mortazavi and F. A. Comin. 1999. Nutrient behavior and phytoplankton production in Gulf of Mexico estuaries. In: T. S. Bianchi, J. R. Pennock and R. R. Twilley [eds.], Biogeochemistry of Gulf of Mexico of Mexico Estuaries. John Wiley & Sons, pp. 109-162.
Schultz, M.K., S.R. Biegalski, K.G.W. Inn, L. Yu, W.C. Burnett. J.L.W. Thomas, and G.E. Smith. 1999. Optimizing the removal of carbon phases in soils and sediments for sequential chemical extractions by coulometry. J. Environ. Monitoring, 1, 183-190.
Thistle, D., L. A. Levin, A. J. Gooday, O. Pfannkuche, and P. J. D. Lambshead. 1999. Physical reworking by near-bottom flow alters the metazoan meiofauna of Fieberling Guyot (northeast Pacific). Deep-Sea Res. I 46: 2041-2052.
Twilley, R. R., Cowan, J., Miller-Way, T., Montagna, P.A. and B. Mortazavi. 1999. Benthic nutrient fluxes among selected estuaries in the Gulf of Mexico. In: T. S. Bianchi, J. R. Pennock and R. R. Twilley [eds.], Biogeochemistry of Gulf of Mexico of Mexico Estuaries. John Wiley & Sons, pp. 163-209.
Wiseman, W.J., Jr., and W. Sturges. 1999. Physical oceanography of the Gulf of Mexico: processes that regulate its biology. In: The Gulf of mexico large marine ecosystem: Assessment, sustainability, and management. H. Kumpf, K. Steidinger, and K. Sherman,[eds.], Blackwell Science, Oxon, England. pp. 77-92.
Wong, R., W.C. Burnett, S.B. Clark, and B.S. Crandall. 1999. An improved assay for the determination of gross alpha and beta activities in soil via liquid scintillation counting. In: Environmental Radiochemical Analysis, G.W.A. Newton, [ed.], Royal Society of Chemistry, Special Publication No. 234. pp. 242-264.
PRESENTATIONS & TRAVEL:
Dr. Bill Burnett attended and helped to organize,
together with Dr. Horst Fernandes, an International Symposium on Technologically-Enhanced
Natural Radioactivity (TENR) from Sept. 12-17 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
This conference brought together researchers from all over the world who
are working on how concentrations of naturally-occurring radionuclides
may occur by industrial processes.
Dr Reide Corbett went on a cruise along the Mississippi Delta to collect cores and study pore water chemistry on the RV Pelican, Nov. 1-3, 1999.
Dr. Guebuem Kim, Mike Lambert, Jamie Christoff, and Dr. Burnett attended the 45th Conference on Bioassay, Analytical, and Environmental Radiochemistry (BAER) at NIST in Gaithersburg, Maryland from Oct. 18-22. Their group had 2 plenary session presentations, 2 posters, and 3 workshop presentations.
Dr. Guebuem Kim, Kevin Dillon, Terry Petrosky, Nathan Tossobi, and Dr. Burnett participated in an EPA-funded field experiment in he Florida Keys in September. SF6 and P-32 tracers were injected into the disposal well at Key Colony Beach to assess the rates of water flow through the limestone bedrock and the uptake of phosphate onto the rock.
In August, Dr. Kostka was invited to present a seminar at the Gordon Conference on Chemical Oceanography, Meredith, NH. His seminar was entitled, "The role of FE(iii) reduction in diagenesis over geologic time."
Dr. Kostka traveled to China in September with his lab manager, Dava Dalton. They were members of a USDA-sponsored team for a scientific exchange mission sent to discuss the role of microorganisms in limiting nutrient availability to crops in flooded agricultural soils such as rice fields. They visited 5 universities in 4 cities including: Beijing, Xian, Wuhan, and Nanjing. Kostka gave a lecture on anaerobic microorganisms in soils at each university. The possibility of building a formal university-level relationship with the universities for student and scientific information exchange was discussed at all locations. They also visited some rice fields where they have an ongoing research collaboration at the Chinese National Academy's Institute for Soil Science in Nanjing.
On October 25-26, Kostka was one of three principal investigators organizing a conference sponsored by the EPA Hazardous Substance Research Center at the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography in Savannah, Georgia. This conference covered fundamental research of mercury contamination in wetland environments and bioremediation.
Dr. Bill Landing organized and chaired a session titled "Geochemistry and Bioavailabilityof Nitrogen and Phosphorus in Dissolved Organic Compounds" at the August 1999 American Chemical Society National Meeting in New Orleans. He gave the following two seminars:
(Scott Sigler, Stephanie Smith-Moore, Paulo Barrocas, William M. Landing, and Jaye Cable) Historic mercury sedimentation in Lake Barco: results from the Florida Aquatic Ecosystem Mercury Cycling and Modeling Project (FAEMCMP).
(William M. Landing , Vincent J.M. Salters, William T. Cooper III, Yuch P. Hsieh, Alan G. Marshall, Lita Proctor, and Yang Wang) The speciation and sources of dissolved phosphorus in the Everglades.
Dr. Nancy Marcus presented a paper titled "A Reliable Source of Copepod Nauplii for Rearing Marine Ornamental Fish: The Potential of Diapause Eggs" in mid-November, 1999 in Hawaii at the Marine Ornamentals '99: First International Conference on Marine Ornamentals, Collection, Culture, and Conservation.
Dr. Behzad Mortazavi served as an invited chair for a session, Net limits of Primary Productivity, at the 15th Biennial International Estuarine Research Federation Conference, September 25-30, 1999, in New Orleans. He also presented:
(Mortazavi, B., R.L. Iverson, W. Huang, G. Lewis III and J. M. Caffrey.) Nitrogen Budget of Apalachicola Bay, a bar-built estuary in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico.
In October, Dr. Thistle and Keith Suderman spent two weeks at sea on the R/V Seward Johnson as part of an ONR project entitled Sediment Acoustics Experiment 99. Population number and identity measurements were taken of small animals that swim out of the seabed at night. They will be comparing their findings with acoustical data to determine vertical distribution and timing of the animal's excursions into the water column.
Fulbright Professor Visits the Department
Dr. Kontar
with his daughter, Katia
Dr. Evgeny Kontar, a visiting Russian scientist, has been collaborating with oceanography Professors Bill Burnett, Georges Weatherly, and others on a joint project on ecological policy, assessment and prediction of the fate of Chernobyl radionuclides in the Black Sea.
This project is part of the fundamental research carried out by the Russian Academy of Sciences. The aim of the project is to develop the policy and methods for assessing the fate of the Chernobyl radionuclides in the Black Sea and incorporate the study of US models and work with scholars in USA to develop an international approach to the problems of measurement and prediction of sea pollution, combining methods of geoecological monitoring and comparative analysis of techniques used in the USA and Russia for assessing marine environmental contamination. An ecological policy will be formulated jointly with American specialists and recommendations will be made for minimizing the negative effect of contamination on the marine environment.
Kontar's 8month stay at the FSU Department of Oceanography, funded by a grant from the United States Information Agency, comes to an end May 15, 2000. However, the relationship between the Russian and American oceanographers promises to continue well into the future.
VISITORS:
The department was pleased to host the following visitors who gave oceanography seminars this Fall:
· Bernard Barnier, The Institute of Mechanics, Grenoble France
· Jane Caffrey, Institute of Marine Sciences, University of California at Santa Cruz
· Dudley Chelton, College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Science, Oregon State University
· Richard Devereux, US EPA/NHEERL, Gulf Ecology Division
· Kwang-Yul Kim, Department of Meteorology, Florida State University
· Nobuo Suginohara, Center for Climate System Research, University of Tokyo
· Alina Szmant, Department of Biology, University of North Carolina at Wilmington
· Mark Verschell, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Dr. Makoto Taniguchi is visiting the department for three months from the Nara University of Education, Nara, Japan. Dr. Taniguchi's stay is partially supported by the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR). He will be doing collaborative work with Drs. Jeff Chanton and Bill Burnett on measurement techniques for submarine groundwater discharge.
Britta Gribsholt, one of Dr. Kostka's Ph.D. students, is visiting the Kostka Lab from Odense University in southern Denmark. She will be at FSU through February studying the influence of fiddler crab burrows on nutrient remineralization in saltmarsh sediments.
Dr. Georges Weatherly
takes time out to play string bass in the Big Bend Community Orchestra,
known locally as the "Big Bend Bowers, Blowers, Beaters, and Bleaters,"
which consists of more than sixty individuals from the Tallahassee and
surrounding communities. Weatherly joined the group earlier this year
and has been playing bass since the age of fourteen.
View
from the Bridge
Fall semester has been a very exciting one. We welcomed a fine group of new graduate students who have been energetically working on their degree programs. We added new professionals as well. Assistant Professor Joel Kostka joined as the bridge person between the biology and chemistry groups and brought his technician Dava Dalton with him. Associate Professor Kevin Speer and his wife Associate Scholar/Scientist Sophie Wacongne joined the physical-oceanography group. These folks are busy writing courses and grants, recruiting students, and generally establishing themselves as new sources of strength for the department.
During my six years as chair, I have been particularly interested in our space limitations. This semester has seen some real progress. The conversion of the central core lab (room 440) on the fourth floor is nearly complete, creating two large offices for graduate students and a new computer laboratory. We will also move the ethernet hub to this space, freeing up an office elsewhere on the fourth floor. The construction to finish converting the penthouse into a laboratory has begun. When it is finished, this space will not be assigned permanently to anyone but will be assigned as needed. When someone gets a large project funded, they can request space in this laboratory for the duration of the project. This swing space will allow the chemistry and biology groups much more flexibility than they have at present to deal with large projects.
Things promise to be almost as exciting next semester. In particular, my second term as chair will end in August, and Dean Foss has appointed a committee to help him identify the person who will be chair for the 2000-2003 term. The committee consists of Allan Clarke, Jeff Chanton, Jim Cowart (from the Department of Geological Sciences), and Rich Iverson.
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