Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology Commons^™

The Influence Of Bottom Type And Water Column Stratification On Reef Fish Community Structure At Gray’S Reef National Marine Sanctuary, Bridget Campbell

Honors Theses

Understanding the physical and oceanographic differences across reef habitats can help researchers assess how those differences influence fish distribution and community structure, which leads to a better understanding of what a healthy reef system looks like. The traditional methods used to assess fish communities on temperate reefs are limited and often focus solely on either the reef structure or water column conditions alone. An assessment of both data sets yields a more complete understanding of the ecosystem as a whole. In this study, Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary (GRNMS) was surveyed both inside and outside a Marine Protected Area (MPA) …

Land Use As A Predictor Of Water Hyacinth (Eichhornia Crassipes) Presence On The Entebbe Coast Of Lake Victoria, Uganda, Zachary Hoffman

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Lake Victoria is shared amongst Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda and has tremendous ecological, economical, and cultural significance. Within the lake system, there are several problems, including the proliferation of an invasive weed, water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes). Therefore, this study aims to assess several factors that may correlate with water hyacinth proliferation. The specific objectives are (1) to identify possible correlations of water hyacinth density and land use around Entebbe, Uganda, and (2) to identify annual trends in water hyacinth coverage, to better inform policy and conservation efforts. Entebbe has a coastline of six land cover types: flooded vegetation, trees, grasses, …

An Eventful Past Predicting A Bizarre Future: Assessing The Influence Of Ocean Circulation On Key Fish Species In Icelandic Waters. An Analysis Of Past Circulation Records In Order To Predict The State Of Demersal Fish Stocks In Future Climate Scenarios, Matthew Engfer

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Feedback-driven changes in North Atlantic Ocean circulation are affecting marine ecosystems off the coast of Iceland and are predicted to have differing outcomes by 2100. In this study, data reflecting Icelandic fish stock distributions was compiled on a map with oceanographic temperature and depth in order to observe patterns of population changes with changes in ocean currents. After evaluating past temperature effects on demersal fish stocks, future habitat predictions were estimated in weaker ocean circulation scenarios. A number of assumptions were made in order to pinpoint a correlation between ocean temperature and fish habitat. Iceland’s unique location and climate offers …

Letters To A Glacier; An Experiment And Critique Of M. Jackson’S Glacier-Ruins Narrative, Lily Fife Schaeufele

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

“Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it. They feed understanding or emotion back and forth and amplify it.” —Ursula K. Le Guin

Letters to a Glacier; The Buoy Project Isafjordur is an ongoing invitation to the people of Isafjordur to write a letter to a specific glacier in Iceland onto a collection of discarded buoys gathered from the Isafjorudur and Bolungarvik junk yards. Over a period of two days on November 9th and 10th, I actively invited customers in the local cafe Heimabyggð to …

Science Is For Everybody: A Resource For Understanding Glaciers, Climate, And Modeling, Emma Watson

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Climate change threatens the existence of glaciers worldwide. In order to properly interact with these changing systems, we must first understand them. Glacial models provide an excellent way to do this; however, the language and mathematical concepts used in their creation is generally inaccessible to a common audience. This project presents an online resource for a general audience to interact with climate science, glaciology, and glacial modeling. Long term goals for the project include the incorporation of a glacial model of Drangajökull, Vestfirðir, NW Iceland. As such, focus for the project includes a literature review of glaciers, Drangajökull in particular, …

Using Ecological Diversity Analyses To Characterize The Availability Of Healthy Food And Socio-Economic Food Deserts, Annie Goyanes, J. Matthew Hoch

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

“Food deserts” are usually defined as geographic areas without local access to fresh, healthy food. We used community ecology statistics in supermarkets to quantify the availability of healthy food and to potentially identify food deserts as areas without a diverse selection of food, rather than a binary as to whether fresh food is present or not. We test whether produce diversity is correlated with neighborhood income or demographics. Abundance and diversity of fresh produce was quantified in supermarkets in Broward County, Florida, USA. Neighborhood income level and racial/ethnic makeup were retrieved from the U.S. Census and American Community Survey. Although …

Megafauna Of The German Exploration Licence Area For Seafloor Massive Sulphides Along The Central And South East Indian Ridge (Indian Ocean), Klaas Gerdes, Terue Cristina Kihara, Pedro Martínez Arbizu, Thomas Kuhn, Ulrich Schwarz-Schampera, Christopher L. Mah, Jon L. Norenburg, Thomas D. Linley, Kate Shalaeva, Enrique Macpherson, Dennis Gordon, Sabine Stöhr, Charles G. Messing, Simon Bober, Theresa Guggolz, Magdalini Christodoulou, Andrey Gebruk, Antonina Kremenetskaia, Andreas Kroh, Karen Sanamyan, Kathrin Bolstad, Leon Hoffman, Andrew J. Gooday, Tina Molodtsova

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Background

The growing interest in mineral resources of the deep sea, such as seafloor massive sulphide deposits, has led to an increasing number of exploration licences issued by the International Seabed Authority. In the Indian Ocean, four licence areas exist, resulting in an increasing number of new hydrothermal vent fields and the discovery of new species. Most studies focus on active venting areas including their ecology, but the non-vent megafauna of the Central Indian Ridge and South East Indian Ridge remains poorly known.

In the framework of the Indian Ocean Exploration project in the German license area for seafloor massive …

Virginia Beach Flood Protection Program Bond Referendum Analysis, Robert Mcnab, Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf, Afi Anuar, Jessica Whitehead

Presentations, Lectures, Posters, Reports

[First paragraph of the Executive Summary]

On November 2, 2021, voters in the City of Virginia Beach will vote on a referendum that determines whether or not the City Council should increase real estate taxes to fund a Flood Protection Program. The proposal accelerates the construction of six flood mitigation projects already in the Virginia Beach Capital Improvement Plan by 3 years, and funds design and construction of 15 additional projects that would also be completed by 2031. This report, jointly produced by Old Dominion University’s Institute for Coastal Adaptation and Resilience (ICAR) and the Dragas Center for Economic Analysis …

Metabolomics Of Healthy And Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease Affected Montastraea Cavernosa Corals, Jessica M. Deutsch, Olakunle A. Jaiyesimi, Kelly A. Pitts, Jay Houk, Blake Ushijima, Brian K. Walker, Valerie J. Paul, Neha Garg

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Stony coral tissue loss disease, first observed in Florida in 2014, has now spread along the entire Florida Reef Tract and on reefs in many Caribbean countries. The disease affects a variety of coral species with differential outcomes, and in many instances results in whole-colony mortality. We employed untargeted metabolomic profiling of Montastraea cavernosa corals affected by stony coral tissue loss disease to identify metabolic markers of disease. Herein, extracts from apparently healthy, diseased, and recovered Montastraea cavernosa collected at a reef site near Ft. Lauderdale, Florida were subjected to liquid-chromatography mass spectrometry-based metabolomics. Unsupervised principal component analysis reveals wide …

Wildflower Pollen Quality In Roadside Habitats, With Particular Emphasis On Hedera Helix, Aoife Mcmullin, Paul Hamilton

SURE Journal: Science Undergraduate Research Experience Journal

The quality of air is of more significance today than ever before. Human population growth and pollutants emitted through fossil fuel consumption put pressures on air quality. It is widely acknowledged that atmospheric pollutants negatively impact human health; the same is also true for the health of wildlife and plants exposed to these pollutants (Brunekreef & Holgate, 2002; EEA, 2019; Schiavoni, et al., 2017). Pollen and seed formation of flowering plants have been affected when grown in areas of poor air quality (Azzazy, 2016; Sénéchal, et al., 2015). The purpose of this research was to assess pollen of …

Total Organic Carbon And The Contribution From Speciated Organics In Cloud Water: Airborne Data Analysis From The Camp2ex Field Campaign, Connor Stahl, Ewan Crosbie, Paola Angela Bañaga, Grace Betito, Rachel A. Braun, Zenn Marie Cainglet, Maria Obiminda L. Cambaliza, Melliza Templonuevo Cruz, Julie Mae Dado, Miguel Ricardo Hilario, Gabrielle Leung, Alexander B. Macdonald, Angela Monina T. Magnaye, Jeffrey S. Reid, Claire E. Robinson, Michael Shook, James Bernard Simpas, Shane Marie Visaga, Edward Winstead, Luke Ziemba, Armin Sorooshian

Physics Faculty Publications

This work focuses on total organic carbon (TOC) and contributing species in cloud water over Southeast Asia using a rare airborne dataset collected during NASA’s Cloud, Aerosol and Monsoon Processes Philippines Experiment (CAMP2Ex), in which a wide variety of maritime clouds were studied, including cumulus congestus, altocumulus, altostratus, and cumulus. Knowledge of TOC masses and their contributing species is needed for improved modeling of cloud processing of organics and to understand how aerosols and gases impact and are impacted by clouds. This work relies on 159 samples collected with an axial cyclone cloudwater collector at altitudes of 0.2–6.8 km that …

The Design, Production And Validation Of The Biological And Structural Performance Of An Ecologically Engineered Concrete Block Mattress – A Nature Inclusive Design For Shoreline And Offshore Construction, Ido Sella, T. Hadary, A. Rella, Bernhard Riegl, Denise Swack, S. Perkol-Finkel

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Over the past decade, the scientific community has studied, experimented, and published a notable body of literature on ecological enhancement of coastal and marine infrastructure (CMI). The Nature-Inclusive Design (NID) approach refers to methods and technologies that can be integrated into the design and construction of CMI to create suitable habitat for native species (or communities) whose natural habitat has been degraded or reduced. To examine the compliance of new environmentally sensitive technologies with structural requirements and fiscal restraints, while providing ecosystem and habitat value, this paper presents the findings of a structural-economical-biological analysis of ecologically engineered Articulated Concrete Block …

Stable Isotopes Used To Infer Trophic Position Of Green Turtles (Chelonia Mydas) From Dry Tortugas National Park, Gulf Of Mexico, United States, David C. Roche, Michael S. Cherkiss, Brian J. Smith, Derek A. Burkholder, Kristen M. Hart

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Evaluating resource use patterns for imperiled species is critical for understanding what supports their populations. Here we established stable isotope (δ¹³C, δ¹⁵N) values for the endangered green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) population found within the boundaries of Dry Tortugas National Park (DRTO), south Florida, USA. There is little gene flow between turtles sampled at DRTO and in other rookeries in Florida, underscoring the need to study this distinct population. Between 2008 and 2015 we collected multiple sample types (skin [homogenized epidermis/dermis], whole blood, red blood cells, plasma, carapace) from 151 unique green turtles, including …

Air Pressure Propagation Through Wind Cave And Jewel Cave: How Do Pressure Waves Travel Through Barometric Caves?, Annika K. Gomell, Daniel C. Austin, Marc J. Ohms, Andreas Pflitsch

International Journal of Speleology

In barometric caves, air pressure gradients between the outside atmosphere and the cave induce strong bidirectional compensating currents, which control almost all elements of speleoclimatology, including air temperature, humidity, and CO₂ dynamics. Therefore, this study set out to investigate air pressure propagation through Wind Cave and Jewel Cave – two major barometric cave systems in the Black Hills of South Dakota, USA. Based on high-resolution air pressure data from both the surface and several measurement sites inside the caves, four systematic changes of pressure waves during their journey through the caves and their related speleoclimatological processes were identified and …

Structure And Photocatalytic Influence Of N-Doping Ato Nano-Tubes On Antibacterial Activity Toward Escherichia Coli, Shing-Hoa Wang, Shiu-Mei Liu, Kan-Hung Hu, Chien-Chon Chen, Tai-Yuan Lin, Shuei-Wan Juang, Chia-Yuen Yen, Shu-Ting Lu, Chia-Heng Liu

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

The photocatalytic antibacterial properties of anodic titanium oxide (ATO) nanotubes in the anatase structure derived from annealing at 450°C or 550°C or N-doping treatment were tested on Escherichia coli under UV-A, visible light illumi-nation, and dark conditions. Under UV-A illumination and dark conditions, in most cases, E. coli cultures containing ATO nanotubes of different treatments showed either no or slight differences in their growth from the cultures without ATO nanotubes. However, under visible light illumination, the growth of E. coli was inhibited in cultures containing ATO nanotubes. Among the three forms of ATO nanotubes, N-doped ATO nanotubes had the strongest …

Effectiveness Against White Sharks Of The Rpela Personal Shark Deterrent Device Designed For Surfers, Craig Blount, Dan Pygas, Marcus P. Lincoln Smith, Daryl P. Mcphee, Colby Bignell, Ocean Ramsey

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Many shark bites to humans, including fatalities, have involved surfers. Various personal shark deterrents are commercially available to surfers, including Rpela v2, which is a battery-powered device fitted to a surfboard. It produces an electric field around the surfer aimed at deterring sharks from approaching or biting by disrupting their electro-reception organs. The device was tested on white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) at Salisbury Island, Western Australia. In total, 46 trials were done with the Rpela v2 either active or not active to determine the device’s effect on sharks’ response to a floating board with fish bait attached (to tempt a …

Inter-Annual Changes Of Water Temperature In The Southern South China Sea's Continental Shelf: The Influence Of Enso On Malaysian Waters, Afifi Johari, Mohd Fadzil Akhir, Muhammad Naim Satar, Zuraini Zainol, Guo Jingsong

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

An extensive amount of data from the World Ocean Database (WOD) that covers the southern South China Sea (SSCS) were analysed to study the long-term trends and variations of the El-Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event. The WOD data were selected from 1951 to 2010, which included the area within 0–10 °N and 100–117 °E. El-Nino and La-Nina anomaly results showed that the sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTa) trend of SSCS was higher during offset-El-Nino years and lower during offset-La-Nina years. Besides, the inter-annual vertical water temperature profile revealed that the deepening of the warmer water temperature occurred in February and …

The Eumedonine Genera Eumedonus H. Milne Edwards, 1834, And Gonatonotus White, 1847 (Crustacea: Brachyura: Pilumnidae) In Taiwan, Peter K. L Ng, Chia-Wei Lin

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Two species of eumedonine crabs, Eumedonus zebra Alcock, 1895, and Gonatonotus nasutus Chia & Ng, 2000, are recorded from Taiwan, the former for the first time. Both are also new genera records for the island. Notes on variation are noted and their taxonomy briefly treated. The number of eumedonine species, all of which are obligate symbionts on echinoderms, known from the island is now seven genera and seven species.

An Analysis Of Consumer Evaluations Of The “Tagonoura Shirasu” Certification Under The Japan Geographical Indication Protection System, Yu-Heng Lu, Takahiro Sajiki

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Over time, the Geographical Indication (GI) protection system has been independently adopted in more than 100 countries worldwide. In Japan, the GI protection system has been operating since 2015 in response to a growing interest in local brands. Therefore, based on a questionnaire survey, we econometrically analyze the consumer evaluation of Shizuoka Prefecture’s Shirasu “Tagonoura Shirasu,” which is registered under the GI protection system. Shirasu is a collective term for long and narrow larvae such as anchovy (Engraulis japonicus), sardine (Sardinops melanostictus), or red-eye round herring (Etrumeus sadina). Based on the contingent valuation method, we clarified that consumers' additional willingness …

A Two-Stage Approach To Integrate Vessel Geo-Tracking Data And Logbooks For Monitoring Fishing Activity Of Coastal Fisheries In Waters Off Northwestern Taiwan, Yi-Jou Lee, Nan-Jay Su, Cheng-Hsin Liao, Wei-Chuan Chiang, Chun-Huei Li

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Catch and fishing effort data are fundamental information to stock assessment and fisheries management, but difficult to obtain without the support of administration and sound fishery data collection system. This study integrated various sources of data from a simplified vessel geo-tracking system and logbooks from interviews with captains of coastal gillnet fisheries. We developed a two-step approach based on hierarchical cluster analysis to characterize the operation patterns and infer the fishing activities of the fishery. Results showed that the fishing effort in terms of operation duration could be estimated precisely for various vessel sizes, with catch composition and harvest information …