Canopy? Commodity? The Curious Case of Rockweed (Ascophyllum nodosum)
Arctic Aquatic Connectivity Under Change: Linking Physical and Biogeochemical Processes Across the River–Ocean Interface
A General Model for The Evolution of Thermal Performance Curves with Application to Real Time-Series Data
In Maine, lobstermen last year took home over a half-billion dollars in revenue.
However, that fishery remains under threat as warming waters drive invasive species into lobsters’ habitats, species that both compete for resources and hunt the native lobsters. Working lobstermen’s ecological knowledge can be key in untangling these complicated dynamics, according to a Northeastern University professor of marine and environmental sciences.
Using an in-depth survey and interview process of lobstermen in Maine and Massachusetts, Northeastern University professor Jonathan Grabowski and his intercollegiate team studied the innate knowledge that lobster fishermen have of complex food-web relationships and animal interactions within and across different habitats. Their findings demonstrate that the insights of lobstermen, and local fishermen more broadly, provide an invaluable understanding of changing ecosystems as fishery management practices struggle to keep up.
Read more at Northeastern Global News
Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University
New England’s a complicated place, especially when it comes to flooding. Researchers at the Coastal Sustainability Institute are finding new ways to reduce uncertainty in this system.
Samuel Muñoz, associate professor of marine and environmental sciences at Northeastern University, says that the region’s complex network of small, interconnecting rivers, a diverse topography and Atlantic atmospheric movements all make it extremely difficult to model mathematically.
New research from Muñoz and Ph.D. student Lindsay Lawrence uses machine learning to build “self-organizing maps” to reveal how atmospheric and land conditions interact, identifying four patterns that lead to flooding in New England. This breakthrough in weather modeling promises to help predict floods before they happen, especially in a warming climate.
Read more at Northeastern Global News
AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File
10 undergraduates will present on their recent work in MES/MSC research labs.
The Role of Eddies in Eastern Boundary Upwelling Systems
Join the seminar at the MSC Bunker Classroom or virtually on Zoom.
Preserving DNA in biological samples has long posed a challenge for researchers, but the process may be about to get a lot easier.
Researchers and students at Northeastern’s Ocean Genome Legacy Center (OGL) have developed what they claim is a breakthrough in DNA recovery from frozen tissues. And they shared the discovery in a recent publication.
The Northeastern team found that using a common food additive called EDTA did a better job of preserving the DNA of biological specimens than traditional methods such as immersion in ethanol.
“We discovered that EDTA is very effective at preserving DNA in tissue samples, which was something that no one had actually demonstrated before,” says Dan Distel, the project’s principal investigator and director of OGL.
“EDTA is safer and more effective than ethanol, and much more convenient than working with frozen tissues,” Distel says.
The team recently received patent approval to protect their discovery.
Read more at Northeastern Global News
Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University
Another rare lobster is making a splash at Northeastern University’s Marine Science Center in Nahant.
The brilliantly colored orange and black lobster is called a calico, and the odds of catching one are believed to be only one in 30 million, says Sierra Munoz, outreach program coordinator at the Marine Science Center.
That makes the female lobster — whom Munoz’s children named Jackie, short for Jack O’Lantern — even more rare than the recently arrived blue lobster Neptune, whose coloration is about one in 2 million.
Like Neptune, Jackie was caught off the coast of Massachusetts, this time by Mike Tufts, a lobsterman who operates out of Gloucester.
“One day he sent me a message with a picture of this beautiful calico and asked if we had room in our tanks for another beautiful, rare lobster,” Munoz says.
“I said, ‘Of course we do,’” Munoz says. “It’s such a thoughtful—and fun—donation to our science education program.”
Read more at Northeastern Global News
Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University
Off the coast of Antarctica, the sea ice retreated toward the southernmost continent and, like a bottle cap taken off a soda bottle, that reduced pressure slowed down a process of critical carbon dioxide capture, dramatically accelerating the warming of the planet.
But all that happened thousands of years ago, one of the death knells of the last ice age.
And yet, the sea ice of our own age is also retreating, so it’s critical that we understand these oceanic processes that have such a profound effect on the globe.
An oceanic seesaw
We’ve long known that the warming of the Antarctic Ocean contributed to the end of the last ice age, but the traditional hypothesis asserted that the abyssal water around Antarctica and the deep water of the North Atlantic warmed in a “seesaw” pattern “that suggested when one weakened, the other strengthened,” says Chengfei He, a Northeastern University climatologist.
He — an assistant professor of marine and environmental sciences at Northeastern — discovered something that could be a cause for a radical reinterpretation.
Read more at Northeastern Global News
Earlier this Fall, MES Associate Professor Dr. Damon Hall and doctoral student Bryn Anderson hosted scientists and scholars from around the country for “Stakeholder-informed spatial modeling for hydrologic sciences,” a National Science Foundation-supported workshop. The gathering was held at Northeastern University’s Nahant, MA campus in conjunction with CUAHSI- the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc., and was a collaboration between Hall and Indiana University researchers Dr. Darren Ficklin and doctoral student Seth Adelsperger.
Right: Mill River in Taunton, MA.
Stakeholder-informed spatial modeling for hydrologic sciences is transforming how scientists study and manage water resources by bringing water managers, local communities, policymakers, and other affected groups directly into the research process. Rather than working in isolation, scientists collaborate with stakeholders to identify pressing water challenges, incorporate local knowledge into models, helping to ensure the results address real-world needs. This collaborative approach is increasingly vital as communities face growing water scarcity, climate change impacts, and competing demands for limited water resources.
“Each day had a very important element for me. Day one gave me ideas for how we could present the material, as well as the code to fast track some pieces of it (e.g., USGS streamgage data). Day 2 provided important insight into the facets of stakeholder engagement – but the emphasis on researching the parties and organizing them according to influence/interest/power and then trying to sort them out in the context of my own project was key.” – Workshop Participant
Fifteen doctoral students, post-doctoral scholars, and junior faculty from around the US gathered to learn comprehensive approaches to spatial modeling and stakeholder engagement in hydrologic sciences. Participants gained hands-on experience applying statistical techniques to large hydrologic data sets and integrating stakeholder engagement into model development and communication.
Dr. Damon Hall brought his Sustainability Science Lab to Northeastern University in 2023 with a joint appointment between the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and the Department of Marine and Environmental Sciences. Read more about his work in the recent Northeastern news feature here.
A vital waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Panama Canal relies on fresh water supplied by a reservoir to raise and lower the locks that allow the transit of thousands of ships a year.
During times of drought, fewer vessels make it through.
A new paper by Northeastern University professor Samuel Muñoz reports that the risk of shipping disruptions will grow in a warming climate unless steps are taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or to adapt to drier conditions.
“The canal is vulnerable to drought. That vulnerability increases with climate change,” he says. “The models think that the more we warm things, the more severe and frequent these droughts become in Panama.”
The findings highlight the need to address a growing risk to a key link in the global supply chain with “proactive adaptation or mitigation” that maintains canal functionality, Muñoz says in research published in Geophysical Research Letters.
Read more at Northeastern Global News
Photo by Getty Images