October 2023 News and Press from SoMAS

Photo above: Tom Wilson demonstrates the Augmented Reality (AR) Sandbox at Stony Brook’s CommUniversity Day on October 14, 2023 at the Wang Center.

Congratulations to the SoMAS recipients of SUNY Chancellor’s Awards, who were celebrated at a ceremony on October 27: Dominique Barone, Tara Rider, Kevin Reed and Thomas Wilson.

Congratulations to Dr. Sharon Pochron, who joins our tenure-track faculty as an Assistant Professor, converting from an Associate Professor of Practice.

Congratulations to Dr. Lesley Thorne, who has taken over as Associate Dean of Research effective October 16, 2023. Lesley’s research group is very multidisciplinary and she has had numerous productive collaborations across campus.  She has secured considerable funding for her group with a diverse portfolio, with current funding from DEC, DOE, NYSERDA, Orsted, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Congratulations to Jade Blennau, the Peconic Estuary Partnership’s Coastal Resilience & Community Coordinator, who has been accepted to the Coastal & Estuarine Research Federations (CERF)’s Rising TIDES Program. The CERF Rising TIDES (Toward an Inclusive, Diverse, and Enriched Society) Program supports students from backgrounds underrepresented in coastal and estuarine disciplines with the goal of inspiring and motivating them to pursue careers in coastal and estuarine science and management.

Thank you to everyone who helped make SoMAS’s presence at Stony Brook University’s CommUniversity Day a success! There was a great crowd and kids of all ages enjoyed playing in the AR Sandbox. Special thanks to Tom Wilson for organizing the SoMAS tables, and to the volunteers that helped share our science: Adam Charboneau, Luis Medina, Mohamed Elsaied, Christina Gilbert, Mark Lang, Yanze Liu, and Jonathan Lim. Photos from the event are available on Google Photos.

Dr. Joe Warren has received a new award from UNH/ONR, in the amount $147,000, in support of the project “Spatial and temporal variability in biophysical processes and sound scattering at a long-term acoustic monitoring site”, for the period 7/1/23 – 6/30/25.

High frequency (10s-100s kHz) underwater sound is a valuable tool used by marine mammals, scientists, and sonar operators to interrogate the marine environment. But in the complex ocean, there are a variety of both physical and biological processes (Warren et al., 2003) which can affect the propagation of this energy, primarily through scattering processes. This study will investigate how the combined effects of pelagic zooplankton and coastal ocean dynamics impact the temporal and spatial variability in acoustic backscatter near a long-term Gulf of Maine passive/active acoustic monitoring site. Proposed observations are designed to sample and assess the relative sound scattering impacts of macrozooplankton, nekton, and fish aggregations and their behavior (e.g. diurnal migrations) relative to semi-diurnal water column profile change driven by linear and nonlinear internal tidal forcing. The approach focuses on filling identified observational gaps meant to improve the interpretation of daily signal variations observed near the Wilkinson Basin (AEON5) Gulf of Maine monitoring station. This region is a highly dynamic area where the tide and complex bathymetry are central to the local circulation and ecosystem dynamics. One project component will be a dedicated spatial echosounder survey to resolve known km-scale variability in the internal wave and sound backscatter fields around this site in the late spring period where these combined biophysical controls are typically present. This shipboard sampling will also include in situ zooplankton and hydrographic survey data to quantify scatterer and water column spatial decorrelation scales in a 10 km2 area surrounding the site. Alongside this effort, high-rate fixed site sampling at 1 to 10 minute time scales will be used to characterize temporal variability that is not measured using the ongoing hourly AEON5 active acoustic time series. This will be done using a continuous vertical profiler and bottom-mounted ADCP measurements collected next to station AEON5. The time-series data will also address correlation and the sound scattering controls shared between observed spatial and temporal variability, as observed using combined ship-based and profiler-based observations surrounding this long-term site. Field work and data processing will be performed in the project’s first year, with year two focused on data analysis documenting variability at these short scales, data product delivery, and better understanding the implications for existing and future soundscape monitoring networks in regions with similar coastal complexity.

SoMAS was well-represented at the New York Marine Rescue Center’s “Run for the Ridley” 5k race.  Participants included Nancy Black, Joe Warren, Stephen Heck, Kelley Heck, Adrienne Tracy, Max Fishlow, and Kurt Bretsch.

Congratulations to the winners of the Evan R. Liblit Scholarships, which honors the memory of Evan Liblit, a leader in waste management and recycling on Long Island:

• Undergraduate Student Awardees: Isabella Filagrossi and Sydney Sherbitsky
• Graduate Student Award: Kimberly Lato
• And the recipient of the Liblit Scholarship in the MCP program is: William Laffey

 

SBU News Features

• Scientists Call for Real-Time Analysis of Tropical Cyclones in the Context of Climate Change
• Neighbors Experience the Best of SBU at CommUniversity Day
• The Unraveling of a Protist Genome Could Unlock the Mystery of Marine Viruses

 

Latest Seminar Videos

• Steven Greybush, TAOS 2023-10-11 “Exploring Martian Atmosphere Weather with Spacecraft and Simulations“
• Elisabeth Sikes, OSAC 2023-10-13 “The Southern Ocean’s Role In Glacial Interglacial Climate Change“
• Marek Stastna, TAOS 2023-10-18 “A Brief Tour of The Description and Simulation of Internal Waves in the Coastal Ocean“
• Gabriel Gasque, OSAC 2023-10-20 “The Power of Sharing Detailed Methods“
• Alex Gonzalez, TAOS 2023-10-25 “Dynamical Importance of the Trade Wind Inversion in Suppressing the Southeast Pacific ITCZ“
• Jim Ammerman, OSAC 2023-10-27 “The Long Island Sound Study: New Science, New Opportunities and Challenges, a New Management Plan, and Likely a New Name“

 

Latest Publications

Zhu, J., He, J., Ji, D., Li, Y., Zhang, H., Zhang, M., … & Jin, J. (2023). CAS-ESM2. 0 Successfully Reproduces Historical Atmospheric CO2 in a Coupled Carbon-Climate Simulation. Adv. Atmos. Sci. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-023-3172-9

Tomasetti, S. J., Doall, M. H., Hallinan, B. D., Kraemer Jr, J. R., & Gobler, C. J. (2023). Oyster reefs’ control of carbonate chemistry—Implications for oyster reef restoration in estuaries subject to coastal ocean acidification. Global Change Biology.

Kang, Y., & Gobler, C. J. (2023). Nitrogen liberated via allelopathy can promote harmful algal blooms. Harmful Algae, 102490.

Schirmacher, I., Kollias, P., Lamer, K., Mech, M., Pfitzenmaier, L., Wendisch, M., & Crewell, S. (2023). Assessing Arctic low-level clouds and precipitation from above–a radar perspective. EGUsphere, 2023, 1-30.

Czaja Jr, R., Beal, B., Pepperman, K., Espinosa, E. P., Munroe, D., Cerrato, R., … & Allam, B. (2023). Interactive roles of temperature and food availability in predicting habitat suitability for marine invertebrates. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, 108515.

Thorne, L. H. (2023). Albatrosses orient towards infrasound while foraging. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(42), e2314980120.

Knopf, D. A., Silber, I., Riemer, N., Fridlind, A. M., & Ackerman, A. S. (2023). A 1D model for nucleation of ice from aerosol particles: An application to a mixed-phase Arctic stratus cloud layer. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 15, e2023MS003663. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023MS003663

Knopf, D. A., Ammann, M., Berkemeier, T., Pöschl, U., & Shiraiwa, M. (2023). Desorption Lifetimes and Activation Energies Influencing Gas-Surface Interactions and Multiphase Chemical Kinetics. EGUsphere, 2023, 1-140.

Yin, J., Xue, Y., Li, Y., Zhang, C., Xu, B., Liu, Y., … & Chen, Y. (2023). Evaluating the efficacy of fisheries management strategies in China for achieving multiple objectives under climate change. Ocean & Coastal Management, 245, 106870.

Bottorff, B., Lew, M. M., Woo, Y., Rickly, P., Rollings, M. D., Deming, B., … Shepson, P. B. … & Stevens, P. S. (2023). OH, HO 2, and RO 2 radical chemistry in a rural forest environment: measurements, model comparisons, and evidence of a missing radical sink. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 23(18), 10287-10311.

Hunt, N., Pikitch, E., Shank, B., Hodgdon, C. T., & Chen, Y. (2023). Industry and conservation goals are complementary for the most valuable fishery in the United States under climate‐driven life history changes. Conservation Letters, e12982.

 

Latest Press Headlines

Salon: What an orphan owl taught an ecologist about bird intelligence

• Safina, an endowed professor for nature and humanity at Stony Brook University, “Alfie & Me” is the story of how Safina and his wife rescued a baby owl and became entangled in its life. Although they had initially planned on only keeping Alfie for a short period, a chain of random events — most notable among them the COVID-19 pandemic — conspired to keep humans and owls constant in each other’s orbit. Also ran in Yahoo News, ReportWire and others.

NASA Earth Observatory: A Brief Iceberg–Island Encounter

• On the other hand, a large iceberg parked offshore a small island can disrupt penguins from foraging, and Clarence Island is home to more than 100,000 breeding pairs of chinstrap penguins. “But in this case, the timing was lucky because the chinstraps that breed there had not returned to the colony yet,” said Heather Lynch, a Stony Brook University ecologist. “If this had happened in December when they were breeding and the adults were trading off incubation daily, it might have been quite serious since even a few days of blocked access to the colony might mean a failed breeding year.”

27 East: Latest Express Sessions Event Explores Lake Agawam Expansion Plan

• The lunchtime panel discussion, which was moderated by Express News Group Executive Editor Joseph P. Shaw, featured the voices of several key community members and stakeholders, including Southampton Village Mayor Bill Manger, Lake Agawam Conservancy Board member David Bohnett, former Southampton Village Mayor Michael Irving, Southampton Town Planning Director Janice Scherer, Shannon Willey, the owner of the local business Sea Green Designs, and Dr. Christopher Gobler, a professor at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences.

Salon/TIME: What an Owl Taught Me About Life

• Carl Safina, a professor at Stony Brook University, is the author of Alfie and Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe

NASA Earth Observatory/FocusTechnica: 39 Nautical-Mile-Long Iceberg Grazes Clarence Island

• On the other hand, a large iceberg parked offshore a small island can disrupt penguins from foraging, and Clarence Island is home to more than 100,000 breeding pairs of chinstrap penguins. “But in this case, the timing was lucky because the chinstraps that breed there had not returned to the colony yet,” said Heather Lynch, a Stony Brook University ecologist. Also ran in Live Science, Verified News Explorer Network and Today’s Chronicle.

Wall Street Journal: ‘Alfie and Me’ Review: Owl About the House

• Alfie’s story is wonderfully told, drawing back the night’s curtain on these feisty and intelligent birds. In the process, Mr. Safina, a professor of ecology at Stony Brook University whose books include “Song for the Blue Ocean” (1998) and “Becoming Wild” (2020), paints an engaging portrait of the life he and his wife share with their dogs, spring chickens and, of course, Alfie.  Also ran on MSN.

Newsday: Whale harassment off Long Island a concern as more visit region

• Even if the whale is not hit, trailing a marine mammal for hours is not a good idea, said Joshua Meza-Fidalgo, a research associate at the Thorne Lab in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University.

Nature World News: Massive Iceberg Hits 2-Year-Old Penguin Refuge, Clarence Island in Antarctica, No Birds Were Hurt

• Heather Lynch, a statistical ecologist from Stony Brook University, emphasized this stroke of luck, highlighting the potential devastation if the collision had occurred a few months later when the penguins were present.

Interesting Engineering: NASA: Split iceberg D-30A grazed Clarence Island in September

• Heather Lynch, a Stony Brook University ecologist, stated: “But in this case, the timing was lucky because the chinstraps that breed there had not returned to the colony yet. If this had happened in December when they were breeding and the adults were trading off incubation daily, it might have been quite serious since even a few days of blocked access to the colony might mean a failed breeding year.”

27East.com/Southampton Press: The Sessions Report: Transformational Plans for Lake Agawam Under Consideration (podcast)

• Joining the Express Sessions panel are David Bohnett, board member, Lake Agawam Conservancy; Dr. Christopher Gobler, professor, Stony Brook University School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences; Michael Irving, former Southampton Village mayor; Bill Manger, Southampton Village mayor; Janice Scherer, Southampton Town planning director; and Shannon Willey, owner, Sea Green Designs in Southampton Village.

Space: Satellite time-lapse shows 45-mile long iceberg colliding with Clarence Island in Antarctica

• “The timing was lucky because the chinstraps that breed there had not returned to the colony yet,” Heather Lynch, a statistical ecologist at Stony Brook University in New York, said in the statement. If the collision had happened a couple of months later, when the penguins were on the island, it could have been “quite serious,” she added. Also ran in USA News Hub.

Newswise: Scientists Call for Real-Time Analysis of Tropical Cyclones in the Context of Climate Change (press release)

• Co-authors Kevin A. Reed, PhD, Professor and Associate Dean of Research in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, and Michael F. Wehner, PhD, of  the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, note that tropical cyclones such as Hurricane Ian are devastating events worldwide, endangering lives and causing damage costing billions of dollars to repair. Therefore, the public, media, and governmental leaders affected by such extreme storms turn to scientists to understand more about the weather event and how climate change may have affected it. Also ran in World News and Public Now.

Newsday: Toxic blue-green algae in three Suffolk ponds

• Stony Brook University researchers, who test bodies of water when they receive reports from the public of a possible bloom, found the cyanobacteria after testing samples from the three ponds.

LongIsland.com: LaLota Announces Over $6 Million in Additional Funding for Stony Brook University Research

• New York First Congressional District Representative Nick LaLota (R-Suffolk County) has announced additional research grants at Stony Brook University. Through these grants, Stony Brook will receive an additional $6,955,090 in federal funding. Programs receiving funding include research projects on a wide range of topics including artificial intelligence, prosthetics, cancer, family health, and geothermal energy.

Science: ‘Voice of the sea’ may help albatrosses catch the perfect wind

• It’s a compelling idea, agrees Lesley Thorne, an ecologist at Stony Brook University who was not involved with the work. “But I don’t think it can explain everything” about albatross navigation, she says. “[The birds] are probably using a number of cues to navigate.”

Newswise/Phys.org: Scientists call for real-time analysis of tropical cyclones in the context of climate change (press release)

• Co-authors Kevin A. Reed, professor and associate dean of Research in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, and Michael F. Wehner, of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, note that tropical cyclones such as Hurricane Ian are devastating events worldwide, endangering lives and causing damage costing billions of dollars to repair. Also ran in Sky News, PublicNow and World News.

Futurity: Tropical cyclones warrant real-time forecasting

• Coauthors Kevin A. Reed, a professor and associate dean of research in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, and Michael F. Wehner of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, note that tropical cyclones such as Hurricane Ian are devastating events worldwide, endangering lives and causing damage costing billions of dollars to repair. Therefore, the public, media, and governmental leaders affected by such extreme storms turn to scientists to understand more about the weather event and how climate change may have affected it.

BNN Network: Climate Change and its Impact on Adélie Penguins in Antarctica

• The study, conducted by researchers from the University of Delaware and Stony Brook University, examined a colony of Adélie penguins on the Antarctic Peninsula over a 40-year period. The team discovered that the population had decreased dramatically, by 70%, since the 1970s. This decline was attributed to alterations in sea ice conditions and food availability.

Dan’s Papers: East End Seaweed Cultivation Program Taking Root

• Suffolk County officials are looking to develop a new seaweed cultivation program in Peconic Bay and Gardiners Bay in an effort to foster an emerging aquaculture industry and improve local water quality. The county is issuing a request for proposals (RFP) in October for the program, which builds on the county’s existing pilot program in partnership with Stony Brook University and the aquaculture program for shellfish that has the same goals.

Futurity/Scribd: Tropical cyclones warrant real-time forecasting (press release)

• Coauthors Kevin A. Reed, a professor and associate dean of research in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, and Michael F. Wehner of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, note that tropical cyclones such as Hurricane Ian are devastating events worldwide, endangering lives and causing damage costing billions of dollars to repair.

Newsday: Fire Island restaurants join shell recovery program to rebuild marine habitats

• Seatuck, which works to conserve Long Island wildlife and the environment, since 2018 has collected nearly 200,000 oyster shells at dozens of restaurants participating in the program across Long Island and prepared the shells for distribution to oyster restoration programs, such as The Shinnecock Bay Restoration Program run by Stony Brook University. Also ran in Delecious Food.

Ivoox: S4E40: Stories of Travel, Adventures & Conservation with Dr. Carl Safina (podcast)

• Dr. Carl Safina is the Founding President of the Safina Center, inaugural holder of the Carl Safina Endowed Chair for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University, and host of the PBS series Saving the Ocean with Carl Safina. He is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of BEYOND WORDS: What Animals Think and Feel and the new book ALFIE & ME: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe.

Science/Nexus Newsfeed: ‘Voice of the sea’ may help albatrosses catch the perfect wind

• It’s a compelling idea, agrees Lesley Thorne, an ecologist at Stony Brook University who was not involved with the work. “But I don’t think it can explain everything” about albatross navigation, she says. “[The birds] are probably using a number of cues to navigate.”

Science News: Róisín Commane sleuths out greenhouse gas leaks to fight climate change

• She started by characterizing the city’s greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane. In collaboration with scientists from the City University of New York, Stony Brook University and the University of Rochester, she developed a network of monitors to sample gases around the city and state. Also ran in Head Topics, Prime News Print and several others.

Newsday: Hurricanes are strengthening faster, with more powerful winds, off the Atlantic coast, new study says

• Kevin Reed, associate dean for research at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, said the paper added to the body of research from around the world showing that hurricanes are becoming stronger. “This study provides additional evidence that global climate change is increasing the damage potential of hurricanes, and tropical cyclones more generally,” he said in an email.

Vineyard Gazette: After Banner Bay Scallop Year, Fishermen Test the Waters

• The parasite invades and infects the scallops’ body tissues, including those in the kidney, gill, gonad and abductor muscle. It has yet to hit the Vineyard’s scallop stock as hard as New York’s, but Ms. Green-Beach said that she is working diligently with Bassem Allam, a shellfish researcher at Stony Brook University, to get to the bottom of the mystery disease.

Marine Technology News: MTR100: Underwater Cameras, Lights and Ocean Landers

• Photo caption: Figure 1. Stony Brook University PhD candidate, Ashley Nicoll, assembles the interior mount for a GoPro Hero/CamDo Blink controller time lapse underwater camera. The springs are used to gently press the camera against the interior face of the acrylic viewport. Read about Ashley’s MS project in Lander Lab #2, MTR, Vol. 65, #3, March/April 2022. (Photo by Kevin Hardy, Global Ocean Design.)

Fiji Times/Pacific Island News Association: Radioactivity risks in Pacific seafood ‘low’

• Among them is Dr Nicholas Fisher, a distinguished professor and director of the Consortium for Inter-Disciplinary Environmental Research at Stony Brook University, a public research university in New York. One of Dr Fisher’s laboratory research aims is to assess the bioavailability and fate of metals, and this includes radionuclides in marine organisms.

Long Island Advance: Innovative Unified Water Study (paywall)

• Save The Great South Bay is collaborating with several partners on this groundbreaking pilot project including the Town of Hempstead Water Quality Division, Seatuck Environmental, Gobler Laboratory at Stony Brook’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Suffolk County Department of Health, Cornell Cooperative and United States Geological Services, amongst others.

Ivoox: CARL SAFINA – Ecologist – Founding President of Safina Center – NYTimes Bestselling Author (interview)

• Carl Safina’s lyrical non-fiction writing explores how humans are changing the living world, and what the changes mean for non-human beings and for us all. His work has been recognized with MacArthur, Pew, and Guggenheim Fellowships, and his writing has won Orion, Lannan, and National Academies literary awards and the John Burroughs, James Beard, and George Rabb medals. Safina is the inaugural holder of the endowed chair for nature and humanity at Stony Brook University, where he co-chairs the steering committee of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and is founding president of the not-for-profit Safina Center.

WSHU: The building blocks for a renewable Long Island may come from ash

• Frank Roethel, director of the Waste Reduction and Management Institute, is giving a look-over to the Boat House, located on the south campus of Stony Brook University at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences.