Wishing you Peace, Love, Joy, and Discovery this Holiday Season from all of us at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University! We hope this has been a great year and wish you the best for 2023! Here’s what happened this month:
The 2022 Minghua Zhang Faculty Career Catalyst Award recipients have been announced!
In recognition of the wisdom, energy, and dedication that Dr. Minghua Zhang brought to the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences during his tenure as Dean, the Minghua Zhang Faculty Career Catalyst Award recognizes Minghua Zhang’s insight and direction while he served as Dean of SoMAS, which have led to increased recognition and prominence for the school, increased enrollment, and an increased number of talented faculty and new interdisciplinary linkages to other University programs.
This year there were four recipients, and their projects will start in early 2023.:
Jackie Collier – Visualizing Candidate Proteins at the Interface of the Carbon Cycle and Marine Food Webs
Kamazima Lwiza – Examination of Water Balance and Factors Affecting Mixing and Flow Structure in Lake Turkana
Jack McSweeney – Collecting New Observations to Measure Internal Wave Driven Mixing of the Cold Pool
Bradley Peterson – Elucidating Shark Diets with fecal DNA Metabarcoding along the South Shore of Long Island and Quantifying the Role of Offshore Hard Structure as Foraging Hotspot
STONY BROOK, NY — December 15, 2022 — The Stony Brook Council at Stony Brook University has honored New York State Assemblyman, faculty member and alumnus Steve Englebright for his championing of higher education, public service and the environment. At the recent ceremony, Assemblyman Englebright received the University Medal, which recognizes his exceptional achievements on behalf of Stony Brook University. Kevin Law, Chair of the Stony Brook Council, presented the award following passage of a resolution by the full Council. Assemblyman Englebright, a geologist by training, received his Master of Science in Geology (Paleontology/Sedimentology) from Stony Brook University in 1975 and has been a contributing member of the Stony Brook University faculty, teaching numerous courses including the Natural History of Long Island. Read full article on Stony Brook News
Dr. Pavlos Kollias has received a new award from NASA, via CSU, in support of the award entitled “INvestigation of Convective UpdraftS (INCUS)”, in the amount $1,408,235.00, for the period 09/26/2022 to 08/30/2029. Check out the news briefing on SBU News!
Dr. Brian Colle has two new awards, one from the USDA Forest Service, in support of the project “Investigations Into QUIC-Fire Ensemble Predictions of Fire Behavior and Fire Emissions“, in the amount $71,543 (the first 9 months of the project), for the period 12/23/22 – 9/30/24.
Understanding fire behavior and fire emissions requires observations and model predictions that span a range of spatial and temporal scales. Recently, research has focused on the small-scale behavior of fires in order to save lives and property during wildfire events and to inform the fire behavior and emissions production during the execution of prescribed fires. However, wildland fire behavior is complex given that the fuel, weather conditions, and physical processes have large spatial and temporal variability. A new generation of models, such as QUIC-Fire, are computationally efficient while still including the effects of spatially explicit flow patterns, fine-scale heterogeneity of fuel structure, condition, and topography. However, the simplifications used in the development of these more efficient models create additional uncertainty and perhaps additional error that needs to be determined and quantified. The goal of this study is to use QUIC-Fire to explore the following goals:
- Explore several parameters within the model that can lead to large sensitivity to the fire spread and emissions.
- Develop a methodology to better understand QUIC-Fire and evaluate it for various setups and observations.
- Explore the QUIC-Smoke component of QUIC-Fire and its parameters
- Determine some of the predictive capabilities of QUIC-Fire using an ensemble of parameters and weather inputs.
The second award is from NSF (via U. Del. contract), in support of the project “Large-Scale CoPe: Coastal Hazards, Equity, Economic prosperity, and Resilience (CHEER)“, in the amount $760,521, for the period 9/1/22 – 8/31/27.
Community resilience has become a guiding ideal for how to address escalating impacts of hazards in coastal regions. Nevertheless, it remains stubbornly challenging to achieve in practice. We hypothesize that this is due, in part, to constraints imposed by parallel concerns of social equity and economic prosperity and the difficulty decision-makers face in balancing these goals. To address this challenge, the proposed Hub will focus on understanding the tensions among these critical issues, three of the most important societal challenges in hazards and disaster research and practice of our day. The Hub will: (1) Identify, explain, and quantify interactions and tradeoffs among the coastal community goals of equity, economic prosperity, and resilience to hurricane-related hazards; and (2) Develop methods to design and evaluate policy interventions that can enable help coastal communities to thrive achieve these goals.
Specifically, we will operationalize these three broad concepts within a dynamic, spatial mathematical modeling framework that ultimately will serve as a decision support tool to inform disaster policy. The computational framework will consist of seven interacting modules describing the decision-making of (1) households, (2) insurers, and (3) three levels of government; and the natural, built, and economic environments in which those decisions are made (4) hazards, (5) damage/loss, (6) buildings, and (7) economy. The results of this modeling framework will include: (1) recommended federal government policies and the decisions state and local governments, insurers, and households are likely to make in response; (2) outcomes for each stakeholder type to see how each is likely to be affected, including uncertainty, changes over time, and heterogeneity within the stakeholder types; and (3) based on those stakeholder-specific outcomes, assessments of overall community equity, economic prosperity, and resilience over time. Hub research will focus on three case study areas—Eastern North Carolina; Port Arthur, TX; and Houston, TX. Designed using a convergent approach to address the intersections among social, human-built, and natural systems in coastal states, the proposed Hub is ideal for the Coastlines and People program.
Congratulations to Elizabeth Salzman from the Pikitch lab for passing her Master’s Seminar: Bringing Elasmobranchs into Modeling And Management of Shinnecock Bay, New York, Through eDNA Analysis! Libby’s committee included Dr. Mike Frisk and former SoMAS graduate, Dr. Elizabeth Suter.
Congratulations to Mike Doall, Christine Santora, and Maria Grima for presenting on Shinnecock Bay Restoration Program activities at the Restore America’s Estuaries Summit in New Orleans last week. Southampton Trustee, Ann Welker, also attended and supported ShiRP’s restoration work. The talks:
- Rebuilding a Collapsed Hard Clam (Mercenaria Mercenaria) Population, Restoring Seagrass Meadows, and Eradicating Harmful Algal Blooms in a Temperate Lagoon using Spawner Sanctuaries – Mike
- Ten Years of Estuary Restoration in Shinnecock Bay, NY: How Ecological Monitoring and an Adaptive Management Approach Underpin Successful Restoration – Christine
- Using Traditional and Novel Techniques to Monitor Shinnecock Bay’s Crab Community – Maria
Enjoy a look back at the year’s most memorable moments at Stony Brook University with this collection of remarkable images from 2022, taken by photographer John Griffin.
Latest Publications
Wang, J., Xu, B., Zhang, C., Ji, Y., Xue, Y., Ren, Y., & Chen, Y. (2022). Effect of sampling design on estimation of phylogenetic diversity metrics of fish community. Oecologia, 1-13.
Twing, K., Ward, L., Kane, Z., Sanders, A., Price, R., Pendleton, H., … & McGlynn, S. (2022 ).Microbial ecology of a shallow alkaline hydrothermal vent: Strýtan Hydrothermal Field, Eyjafördur, northern Iceland. Frontiers in microbiology, 13.
Khare, P., Krechmer, J. E., Machesky, J. E., Hass-Mitchell, T., Cao, C., Wang, J., … Mak, J.E., & Gentner, D. R. (2022). Ammonium adduct chemical ionization to investigate anthropogenic oxygenated gas-phase organic compounds in urban air. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 22(21), 14377-14399.
Khalsa, N. S., Hodgdon, C. T., Mazur, M. D., & Chen, Y. (2023). Climate-driven shifts in growth and maturity induce changes to the population and fishery dynamics of a high-value crustacean. Fisheries Research, 259, 106574.
Kramer, B. J., Hem, R., & Gobler, C. J. (2022). Elevated CO2 significantly increases N2 fixation, growth rates, and alters microcystin, anatoxin, and saxitoxin cell quotas in strains of the bloom-forming cyanobacteria, Dolichospermum. Harmful Algae, 120, 102354.
Cohen, A. B., Klepac‐Ceraj, V., Bidas, K., Weber, F., Garber, A. I., Christensen, L. N., … & Taylor, G. T. (2022). Deep photoautotrophic prokaryotes contribute substantially to carbon dynamics in oxygen‐deficient waters in a permanently redox‐stratified freshwater lake. Limnology and Oceanography.
Press Highlights
- The Research Foundation for The State University of New York – Stony Brook University: Enhancing the Removal of Hydrophilic Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFASs) by Granular Activated Carbon using Hydrophobic Ion-pairing as Pre-treatment, $199,601
Times Beacon Record: SBU’s Karine Kleinhaus urges efforts to save valuable Egypt’s coral reefs
- Recently, Karine Kleinhaus, Associate Professor at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, published a letter in the prestigious journal Science that suggested it’s time to conserve the Egyptian reefs, which constitute about 2 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.
Newsday: Brookhaven Town delays plan to expand shellfish restoration area in Bellport Bay
- Ocean currents over the past decade gradually deposited enough sediment to close the inlet, making the bay “potentially” less desirable for shellfish restoration, Christopher Gobler, a professor in Stony Brook University’s school of marine and atmospheric sciences, told Newsday.
Science: Paleontologist accused of faking data in dino-killing asteroid paper
- It features what appear to be scanned printouts of manually typed tables containing the isotopic data from the fish fossils. These tables are not the same as raw data produced by the mass spectrometer named in the paper’s methods section, but DePalma noted the data’s credibility had been verified by two outside researchers, paleontologist Neil Landman at the American Museum of Natural History and geochemist Kirk Cochran at Stony Brook University. Also ran in Prime Times.
The Washington Post: Could trawler cams help save the world’s dwindling fish stocks?
- Last year, China deployed just two scientists to monitor a few hundred vessels that spent months fishing for squid near the Galapagos Islands. At the same time, it has blocked a widely backed proposal at the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization to boost observer requirements. “If they want to do something they definitely can,” said Yong Chen, a fisheries scientist whose lab at Stony Brook University in New York hosts regular exchanges with China. “It’s just a question of priorities.” Also ran in Daily Mail, The Seattle Times, The Tribune, The Ridgefield Press, Connecticut Post, Bradenton Herald and others.
Innovate LI: No. 745: Jupiter Probes, LI’s Smartest Women, Historic Meltdowns – And My Baby Just Wrote Me A Letter
- Nuclear family: A new feature-length documentary by Stony Brook University Professor Heidi Hutner sheds new light on one of history’s most notorious nuclear accidents.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: New Story Map Highlights the Importance of NOAA Long-term Observations in the Bering Sea
- This Story Map was developed by Lindsey Neuwirth, a 2022 NOAA College Supported Intern at Stony Brook University.
WPIX-TV: Sea gate plan could protect Long Island’s coastal communities from storm surge
- He, along with oceanographer and Stony Brook professor Malcolm J. Bowman and other scientists, teamed up to figure out a course of action to protect Long Island’s vulnerable South Shore communities.
Yale Climate Control: What’s the difference between a hurricane, a typhoon, and a cyclone?
- Tropical cyclones in the north Atlantic and east Pacific oceans are called hurricanes. In the northwest Pacific Ocean, they’re called typhoons. “And then in other basins, such as the southwest Pacific and near Australia, they’re oftentimes just simply referred to as cyclones,” says Kevin Reed, an associate professor at Stony Brook University.
Arkansas Democrat Gazette/AP: Could trawler cameras help save the world’s dwindling fish stocks?
- “If they want to do something they definitely can,” said Yong Chen, a fisheries scientist whose lab at Stony Brook University in New York hosts regular exchanges with China. “It’s just a question of priorities.”
The Bulletin: Could trawler cams help save world’s dwindling fish stocks?
- “If they want to do something they definitely can,” said Yong Chen, a fisheries scientist whose lab at Stony Brook University in New York hosts regular exchanges with China. “It’s just a question of priorities.”
National Science Foundation: Scientists characterize sea spray particles that form ice crystals in high altitude clouds
- What SSAs are composed of, how they affect cloud formation, and how they may affect climate remain outstanding questions for atmospheric scientists. Now researchers at Stony Brook University have developed a way to simulate SSAs in laboratory tanks that mirror ocean conditions. This has allowed them to determine the organic compounds released by marine microorganisms and discover the role of these compounds as INPs. Also ran in Mirage News.
Vietnam Explorer News Channel: Shinnecock Bay in the USA: With the shells came hope
- “The polluted water was our biggest challenge. Every year we struggled with unhealthy algae in the bay,” recalls Ellen Pikitch, marine biologist and professor at Stony Brook University. Also ran in Tagesschau and several others.
Long Island Herald: Freeport Village meeting focuses on enhancing coastal resiliency for natural disaster defense
- Malcolm Bowman, oceanographer and Stony Brook University professor, was present at the event, along with members of the Long Island Regional Planning Council, to reveal the findings of a four-year New York State study on coastal resiliency.
Times Union: NY Climate Action plan to set roadmap for carbon-free economy
- “I object to any notion that we have a need for hydrogen,” Paul Shepson, dean at SUNY Stony Brook’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, said at a Climate Action Council meeting earlier in the month. He’s in the camp that believes hydrogen or biomass is a way that the gas and pipeline industries are trying to stay in the energy game, given the phase-out of traditional natural gas that the scoping plan envisions. Also ran in Syracuse.com, Rome News-Tribune and Marietta Daily Journal.
The Revelator/Op-Ed: New Hope for Horseshoe Crabs–and the Shorebirds That Depend on Them
- Written by Abigail Costigan who has a master’s degree in marine conservation and policy from Stony Brook University and researches horseshoe crab spawning habitat selection and marine protected areas. She works at The Safina Center.
WDLA-AM: Gov. Hochul Vetoes Seaweed Bill To Help New York Oyster Farms
- In 2021, Hochul approved a “pilot” project by researchers from Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. According to newsday.com, the project grew large areas of kelp, a native seaweed in New York waters, close to developing oyster farms.
Boston Globe/New York Times: How climate change can supercharge snowstorms
- If the globe is warming, shouldn’t there be less snow? It’s a common question. So last winter, as another intense snowstorm blanketed a large part of the United States, we put it to Kevin Reed, an associate professor at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University on Long Island. Also ran in the Straits Times.
What’s Up with That?: New York Climate Act Scoping Plan Approved
- Dr. Paul Shepson, Dean, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University only offered a short statement
Times Beacon Record: Stony Brook Council honors Assemblyman Steve Englebright with University
Medal (press release)
- The Stony Brook Council at Stony Brook University has honored New York State Assemblyman, faculty member and alumnus Steve Englebright for his championing of higher education, public service and the environment.
New York Times: How climate change can supercharge snowstorms
- Last winter, as another intense snowstorm blanketed parts of the US, the New York Times put the question to Dr Kevin Reed, an associate professor at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University on Long Island. It is true, he said, that in a warming world, less snow is falling overall, and covering less area. But higher temperatures also allow the atmosphere to hold more water, which creates more precipitation and makes it more likely to fall quickly. Also ran in the Seattle Times, Straits Times, Head Topics and DNYUZ.
Vineyard Gazette: Bivalve Predator Puts Scientists on Alert
- Dr. Bassem Allam, a shellfish researcher at Stony Brook University, said that the first die-off in the Peconic Bay occurred three years ago, a major blow to a species that had spent the last four decades on the mend since the brown tide events of the 1980s.
University of Saskatchewan: USask chemist wins national institute’s early career research award
- Dr. Paul Shepson (PhD), dean of the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University in New York, wrote that the analytical methods Kahan has developed to characterize physical and chemical properties of air-ice interfaces have led to new insights about reactions in snow-covered regions and “shattered” long-held views.
Newsday: Salt marsh restoration project to combat erosion near Bellport Bay
- Those problems affected the marsh’s ability to act as a natural filter that removes contaminants from salt water, Stony Brook University marine sciences professor Christopher Gobler told Newsday. Restoring the marsh should help provide natural habitat where wildlife can spawn and hide from predators, he said.
Treatment Plant Operator Magazine: USBR Funds Nine Projects to Test Innovative Water Treatment Technologies
- The Research Foundation for The State University of New York-Stony Brook University — Enhancing the Removal of Hydrophilic PFAS by Granular Activated Carbon using Hydrophobic Ion-pairing as Pre-treatment, $199,601.
Times Beacon Record: A Special Honor for Steve Englebright, the consummate politician
- Steve Englebright was teaching geology at Stony Brook University when he began considering public life. “I realized that drinking water was the first limiting factor for the continued well-being of this Island, and I was not really seeing any meaningful public policy growing out of the reports of chaos,” he said.
South Africa Today: Hunting for future-proof marine plants in the acidic waters bathing a volcano
- For instance, in Long Island, New York, where Alyson Lowell is carrying out most of her research on seagrass metabolism and its influences on ocean biochemistry as a PhD candidate at Stony Brook University, light is the factor keeping Zostera from performing greater ecological services. Nutrient pollution from a densely populated area like New York can trigger algal blooms that make less light available for seagrass photosynthesis. “In Long Island, for the success of the restoration we have to clean up our water column,” she said.
