FSU Department of Oceanography Newsletter
No. 24 Spring/Summer 2003
Dr. Joel Kostka Bridges Biological and Chemical Oceanography
He always wanted to be a teacher. Growing up, Dr. Joel Kostka watched his dad teach hundreds of middle-school children over the years. As an undergraduate, he spent three years at Florida Sea Base with the Boy Scouts teaching kids to sail and dive. On those trips, he always managed to include lessons on marine ecology.
Dr. Kostka joined the FSU Department of Oceanography in August 1999 as an Assistant Professor in Biogeochemical Oceanography, bridging Biological and Chemical Oceanography. He was recently promoted to Associate Professor. "I came to FSU because I wanted to teach," he says, "The Skidaway Institute of Oceanography in Savannah, Georgia where I had been working for three years didn't offer a graduate program, so I was excited about coming to work here." Since that time, he has taught many classes including chemical oceanography, marine microbial ecology, and geomicrobiology as well as elementary oceanography and honors classes.
Keeping his classes fresh and interesting is one of Dr. Kostka's goals as a professor. To that end, he integrates field labs at the FSU Marine Lab into his graduate classes and viewing live animals such as hermit crabs or live plankton into his undergraduate classes as often as he can.
Photo by Joseph Edwards, Office of the University Registrar.
Dr. Kostka's expertise is in microbial ecology and biogeochemistry. "Microorganisms dominate chemical cycles on the earth," says Dr. Kostka, "Microbes evolved soon after the earth was formed, and they comprise the predominant form of living biomass on the planet, controlling most of the global biogeochemical cycles necessary to sustain life."
Dr. Kostka's research program seeks to understand how mircoorganisms mediate the biogeochemical cycles of marine and aquatic ecosystems. Funded by the NSF and DOE, his program includes extensive field research as well as laboratory components. This research currently falls into two main projects-1. coastal marine ecosystem processes and 2. bioremediation of radioactive contaminants.
Sean O'Brien, Lab Manager (see page 2), April Smith, Ph.D. candidate, Dr. Sherry Dollhopf, Postdoctoral Fellow, and Deena Westbrook, Undergraduate Fellow, are studying the ecosystems of saltmarshes, seagrass beds, and mangroves to discover how these coastal ecosystems act as a nutrient filter, protecting water quality from nutrient overenrichment and eutro-phication. They also address the relationships between microorganisms and the ecology of larger organisms such as macrophyte plants and benthic macrofauna.
Dr. Jung-Ho Hyun, a 1992 Ph.D. graduate of the dept. and visiting faculty researcher, has uncovered the importance of iron-breathing bacteria to carbon cycling in the saltmarsh over a near ecosystemwide scale.
Since Dr. Kostka arrived at FSU, he has closely collaborated with Dr. David Balkwill, Chair of the Biosciences Department in the new FSU College of Medicine. They are studying how microorganisms may be utilized to clean up radioactive contaminants such as uranium in terrestrial subsurface sediments. Lainie Petrie, Ph.D.. student, and Nadia North, Master's student, along with Mike Dollhopf, Assistant in Research, are working with them on this important research.
Members of Dr. Kostka's lab (clockwise starting lower left) Lainie Petrie, Dr. Jung-Ho Hyun, Dr. Joel Kostka, April Smith, and Dr. Sherry Dollhopf.
Staff
Michaela Lupiani is the Student's Lifeline
She is known as "mom" to many oceanography students, and they'll be the first to tell you that if you get an email from "mom," you'd better pay attention. Michaela Lupiani, Coordinator of Academic Support Services, often refers to herself as "mom" because she is, in a sense, a mom keeping her students on the straight and narrow path of scholarly academics.
Michaela received her BA in Political Science from FSU. She came to the Department of Oceanography in December 1995 from the office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences where she had been working as a fiscal assistant.
Michaela works closely with the students to make sure they've signed up for the proper classes and filled out the correct forms. She also keeps track of their tuition waivers. This keeps her very busy, but Michaela wouldn't have it any other way. "I love it here," she says, "Everyone's wonderful!"
Michaela's other duties involve fielding questions from high school and college students and the public about the department as well as handling the student applications. She also arranges the classroom schedules for the department.
On a personal note, Michaela and her husband Brian will celebrate their silver wedding anniversary this August. They have two children of their own, Adam - 16-years-old and Kate - 12-years-old. Michaela enjoys volunteering at her children's schools and is active in their neighborhood association. The family lives in a beautiful 70-year-old house that often needs their love and attention.
Michaela Lupiani
Around the OSB
Welcome!
Sean O'Brien has joined Dr. Kostka's lab as the new lab manager. He brings considerable experience in microbiology. Sean has a B.S. in Biology from the University of South Florida and a M.S. in Marine Biology from Nova Southeastern University. Before arriving at FSU, Sean taught microbiology as a professor at Broward Community College. He joined Kostka's lab to get back into research.
Ann Wåhlin, Oslo University, Norway, is working with Dr. Nof this spring as a postdoctoral associate. She is here to conduct research and use the experimental facilities in the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. The project title is "Topographic advection of dense water."
Keynote Speaker
Dr. Nancy Marcus was the keynote speaker for the Kick-off of the High School/High Tech program for students with disabilities held at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory on October 22, 2002.
Farewell & Good Luck
Postdoc, Kay Vopel, and his significant other, Angelica Sorgo, left Dr. Thistle's lab in February and moved to New Zealand. Dr. Vopel has taken the position of Benthic Ecologist for the National Institute of Water and Atmosphere Research.
Winchester Initiating Awards Program
Dr. John Winchester was recently authorized by the FSU Chapter of Sigma Xi to initiate a program to promote public understanding of science. The program will recognize FSU students for excellence in science writing for general readers and will be an activity of the office of Vice President for Research, receiving campus-wide publicity. Dr. Winchester is pleased that the Department of Oceanography will play a lead role in launching this important program.
A Star is Born
Dr. Jeff Chanton was interviewed by the BBC and the History Channel for two upcoming documentaries about the Greek Oracle (see Oceanography Spring/Summer 2002 issue). The BBC documentary is entitled "Unlocking the Secrets of the Past."
Scientists & Students Visit the Capitol
The Department of Oceanography was well represented at this year's FSU Day, April 2nd, and Oceans Day, April 3rd, at the Capitol. A big thank you goes out to Behzad Mortazavi, April Smith, Lainie Petrie, Nadia North, and Jim Prater for helping with our display and explaining the workings of oceanography to the capitol visitors and workers. Also, thank you to Dr. Nancy Marcus for loaning out her microscope for Oceans Day. The middle school students were fascinated by the copepods and dynoflatulates floating in what looked like ordinary saltwater.
Travel
Dr. David Thistle went to sea on the R/V Western Flyer of Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in November to deploy an experiment to test effects of carbon-dioxide sequestration on deep-sea animals and again in December to sample the experiment. The manipulations were done with the remote underwater vehicle Tiburon, which was Dr. Thistle's first chance to use this exciting technology.
Linda Sedlecek (on right) came on the second cruise and stayed up all night helping to process cores.
Dr. William Landing (first and second photos), along with graduate students Cliff Buck (third photo), Scott Jakubowski (fourth photo), and Paul Hansard, recently returned from the NSF funded SWISS-III cruise in the Gulf of Mexico. They are studying iron input from African dust (and rivers) and upper-ocean cycling of iron. Iron is a critical nutrient for phytoplankton.
Degrees Conferred
Completed requirements for Ph.D.
Fall 2002
Christopher J. DeHaan,
"Determining the Deep Current Structure in the Gulf of Mexico"
(STURGES)
Andrea Mask,
"An Open Boundry Condition for Layer-to-Level Ocean Model Interaction"
(O'BRIEN)
Julian Simeonov,
"Interaction of Barotropic Vortices in an Unbounded Shear Flow"
(STERN)
Spring 2003
Agatha De Boer,
"The Bering Strait and the Southern Ocean winds' grip on the world climate"
(NOF)
Kevin S. Dillon,
"The Use of Stable and Radioactive Isotopes in Tracing Nutrient Sources
and Sinks in Two Urbanized Coastal Environments of Florida: The Florida Keys and Sarasota Bay"
(CHANTON)
Completed requirements for Masters
Fall 2002
Xujing Jia Davis,
"Evaluation of Wind Products for Forcing Coastal Ocean Models"
(O'BRIEN)
Linda Sedlacek,
"Microhabitat-Scale Variation in Harpacticoid-Copepod Emergence on the Continental Shelf"
(THISTLE)
Alumni News
What can I say about my experi-ences in oceanography? It all started a long time ago in Moscow surrounded by deep snow. Sometimes the snow looked so much like a blue sea that I just could not resist the idea of becoming an oceanographer.
In 1993, this brought me to FSU, a school internationally known for its outstanding program in oceanography. Since then, snow has melted and fell again many times-but not in Tallahassee where I was working on my thesis on the vortex theory.
Finally, in 1997, I emerged as a new Ph.D., ready for heroic deeds in the field of oceanography. As we waited for my wife Elena to complete her doctorate in chemistry, the FSU Oceanography Department once again became my starting point, where I spent another three years as a postdoc. It was a great time, extremely worthwhile scientifically.
During these years I had the pleasure to work on the double-diffusion theory with Professor Melvin Stern, a person who actually founded the field forty years ago.
Finally, in the winter of 2000, I moved to MIT. Of course, the first thing I noticed in Boston is there is a lot of deep snow that looks like a blue sea-suddenly, it all made perfect sense to me! I enjoy my work at MIT. I'm now a research scientist with Professor John Marshall. Although we study a quite different problem related to the large-scale ocean circulation, I still feel that here I do things that I know how to do and enjoy doing.
I would like to finish my letter by sharing an important conclusion with recent and future oceanography graduates. As I now realize from the careers of my FSU peers and my own experiences, oceanography at FSU provides an exceptional training for students in terms of general background, quality of the courses, and development of scientific creativity. Such a package makes our graduates very tough to match in any oceanographic institution. What a precious feeling it is to be comfortable and confident in various scientific environments! Students-oceanographers-Seminoles, proceed with confidence and pride!
Timour Radko,, MIT, 1997 Ph.D. graduate of the department
Reflections on Working with Jim Winne
by Jack Winchester
One of the most memorable occasions in my working with the oceanography shop was when Woody Woodard had just found Jim Winne to work with him. He beamed with pleasure when he said that Jim was a real jewel of a guy, exactly the right person for the job. History has shown that Woody was right.
To recap some ancient history: When I joined FSU in 1970 to chair the Department of Oceanography, we were housed in temporary "Mabry" buildings in the parking lot at the foot of the then new School of Engineering Science building. Soon, thereafter, its dean, Grover Rogers, was stricken with cancer and died. The university administration made a difficult decision to phase out the school and Arts & Sciences Dean Bob Lawton seized the opportunity to move oceanography into the second floor. I suggested to Bob that he also turn over the engineering shop to oceanography, including its machinist Woody Woodard. Bob agreed and did so, a real windfall for oceanography. As programs grew, it became obvious that we needed another person, which led to another windfall, Jim Winne.
Woody and Jim proved to be a tremendous team that designed and built sophisticated air sampling devices, including a large number of cascade impactors turned out on a lathe. These have been deployed in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, in several research programs, and Greenpeace even took some of our air samplers to Antarctica. Subsequently, physics professor Bill Nelson established a company, Pixe International, to make and market cascade impactors designed close to the specifications of those that Woody and Jim had built.
Woody and Jim made the shop more than a machine shop, more accurately an "instrumentation development facility" or at the very least an "instrument shop." We owe them our thanks for establishing a tradition of excellence that we intend to continue in the years ahead and wish Jim good luck.
Professional Activities
New Grants
Dr. Doron Nof
National Science Foundation
$398,967 2003 - 2007
"The Agulhas-Brazil Current domino"
ONR
$293,437, 2003 - 2006
"The role of the Bering Strait in the global and local circulation"
Invited Presentations
Dr. Joel Kostka
"Influence of macrobenthos on biogeochemical processes from the micro- to the macroscale:
coupling of the iron and nitrogen cycles in saltmarsh sediments."
Aquatic Sciences Meeting sponsored by the American Society of Limnologists and Oceanographers,
Salt Lake City, UT
February 2003
Dr. Nancy Marcus
"Copepods, diapause, and marine aquaculture"
University of South Florida
November 2002
"FSU's Living Learning Communities"
Living Learning Communities Conference, Ohio State University
November 2002
"Copepods, diapause eggs, and aquaculture"
Florida A&M University
January 2003
Dr. Jim O'Brien
"Development of scatterometer-derived research-quality surface pressures for the Southern Ocean"
12th Conference on Satellite Meteorology & Oceanography, Long Beach, CA
February 2003
Dr. David Thistle
"Harpacticoid copepod emergence at a shelf site in summer and winter"
Aquatic Sciences Meeting sponsored by the American Society of Limnologists and Oceanographers,
Salt Lake City, UT
February 2003
Publications
Shu, L., and A.J. Clarke, 2002. Using an ocean model to examine ENSO dynamics. Journal of Physical Oceanographers, 32(3), 903-923.
Kostka, J. E., D. Dalton, H. Skelton, S. Dollhopf, and J. W. Stucki, 2002. Growth of iron(III)-reducing bacteria on clay minerals as the sole electron acceptor and a growth yield comparison on a variety of oxidized iron forms. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 68, 6256-6262.
Cervini-Silva, J., J. E. Kostka, R. A. Larson, J. W. Stucki, and J. Wu, 2002. Promoted dehydrochlorination of 1,1,1-trichloroethane and pentachloroethane by microbially-reduced ferruginous smectite. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 22, 1-5.
Xu, J. C., J. W. Stucki, J. Wu, J. E. Kostka, and G. K. Sims, 2001. Fate of Atrazine and Alachlor in redox-treated ferruginous smectite. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 20, 2717-2724.
Mortazavi, B., and J. P. Chanton, 2002. A rapid and precise technique for measuring the δ13C and δ18O-CO2 ratios at ambient CO2 concentrations for biological applications and the influence of container type and storage time on the sample isotope ratios. Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, 16, 1398-1403.
Zavala-Hidalgo, J., S. L. Morey, and J. J. O'Brien, 2003. Cyclonic eddies northeast of the Campeche Bank from altimetry data, Journal of Physical Oceanography, 33, 623-629.
Sharp, R. J., M. A. Bourassa, and J. J. O'Brien, 2002. Early detection of tropical cyclones using SeaWinds-derived vorticity, Bulletin American Meteorological Society, 83, 879-889.
Nof, D., N. Paldor, and S. Van Gorder, 2002. The Reddy maker. Deep-Sea Research I, 49(9), 1531-1549.
Stern, M. E., and J. Simeonov, 2002. Internal wave overturns produced by salt fingers. Journal of Physical Oceanography, 32(12), 3638-3656. Stern, M. E., and K. Helfrich, 2002. Propagation of a finite amplitude potential vorticity front along the wall of a stratified fluid. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 468, 179-204.
Flagg, C. N., L. J. Pietrafesa, and G. L. Weatherly, 2002. Springtime hydrography of the Southern Middle Atlantic Bight and the onset of seasonal stratification. Deep-Sea Research II, 49, 4297-4329.
Pietrafesa, L., C. N. Flagg, L. Xie, G. L. Weatherly, and J. Morrison, 2002. The Winter/Spring OMP current, meteorological, sea state and coastal sea level fields. Deep-Sea Research II, 49, 4331-4354.
Symposium Honors Dr. Jim O'Brien
A symposium on "Upper Ocean Circulation and Air-Sea Interaction" was held on April 28-29 at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in honor of Dr. James J. O'Brien's 35 years as an educator and scientist. The scientific program consisted of talks in the areas of numerical ocean and atmospheric modeling, coastal ocean dynamics, air-sea interaction, equatorial oceanography, ENSO, remote sensing of ocean winds, data assimilation, and other topics that have been central to Professor O'Brien's productive career. Among the attendees were a large number of his colleagues, including many of his former Ph.D. and M.S. students.
Honors
Dr. William Burnett
Received a Named Professorship for scholarly achievement. He chose the title Carl Henry
Oppenheimer Professor of Oceanography.
Dr. Jeffrey Chanton
Received a Named Professorship for scholarly achievement. He is now the John Widmer
Winchester Professor of Oceanography.
Dr. Ya Hsueh
Has been made Professor Emeritus.
Dr. Joel Kostka
Has been promoted to Associate Professor.
Dr. Kevin Speer
Has been promoted to Professor.
Dr. John Winchester
Has been made Professor Emeritus.
View From the Bridge
The renovations continue! Many of you remember the darkroom on the fifth floor. With the digital revolution, it was seldom used, so the biological oceanographers decided to convert it into a walk-in, controlled-temperature facility. Work has begun, and it should be running in early summer. The university is replacing three of the hoods on the fifth floor with modern, low-ventilation-rate versions. One anticipated benefit will be that the doors to the building won't slam so often as the negative pressure is reduced. The department warehouse is being improved by the addition of a loading dock that will make the handling of heavy equipment easier.
The make-up of the department will be very different by the time the next newsletter comes out in the fall. Phil Hsueh and Jack Winchester will have become emeritus professors and begun their transition into retirement. Dave Oliff will have been promoted and become the supervisor of the department's Instrument Shop, and we hope to have a second machinist hired to work with him. Markus Huettel will have joined us as a full professor in the biological-oceanography group. Nancy Marcus will have taken over as department chair, and I will have begun the transition back to the nonadministrative life. Exciting times!
Come and visit us if you are in town. If you can't come to Tallahassee, you could send money (Florida State University Foundation-Department of Oceanography Account 0227). Finding funds for graduate students to attend professional meetings remains a problem. Hope you can help!
David Thistle
Tallahassee, FL 32306-4320 | (850)644-6700
Back to Top | Contact Us | Comments & Questions | Privacy Policy | Copyright