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Undergraduate: Reaction and Transport - MARN 3003Q

Reaction and Transport introduces methods for the quantification of chemical/biological reactions and transport dynamics of marine environmental systems through problem solving. Specifically, you’ll learn to:

  • Ask what processes dominate a signal in the marine environment - what is driving the signal? Give you the tools to start doing this quantitatively

  • Develop an ability to express quantitative results in language that conveys information

  • Connect mental analysis and assessment to the need to perform mathematical calculations

  • Think creatively about problems to analyze information

Key Tools/Concepts Developed include:

  • Steady state vs equilibrium

  • Rate vs flux

  • Residence time

Emphasis:

  • mass balances, chemical reaction, advection, diffusion, steady state, transients state, boundary conditions, dynamic steady state

  • formalized process analysis including specific unit analysis

  • process description mathematically 

  • first order quantification of processes

To develop the skills mentioned above, Reaction and Transport balances lectures with hand on productive problem-solving sessions in small groups with plenty of access to the professor, and EXAMPLES!  By the end of the semester you will have completed 8-10 homeworks that include both short answer and interpretations of quantitative results as well as problems put forth to solve from the scientific literature.  I will guide you through each stage of the course to make sure you are ready in the end to begin applying these problems.

Graduate: Modeling Biogeochemical Tracers in the Coastal Ocean

Development of skills with modern and traditional methods of simulating biogeochemical cycles in the ocean. Specifically, lower trophic level ecosystem and biogeochemical models -nutrient, phytoplankton, zooplankton, and detritus (NPZD), oxygen, carbon, and carbonate cycling will be explored. We rely on a 1D ROMS simulation called BIOTOY -which we run on the HPC facilities at Storrs. Analysis is performed in Python.

 

By the end of the semester, students should be able to:

  1. Understand the basic structure of a NPZD model and a more complicated version with gas exchange

  2. Compile the regional ocean modeling system (ROMS) with a biogeochemistry module turned on

  3. Plot the output from the ROMS model

  4. Perform simple sensitivity tests of an NPZD model

  5. Add a new tracer to a 1D ROMS simulation

Graduate: Connecting urban estuaries to the sea: Coastal oceanography of Long Island Sound and the shelf of the Mid-Atlantic Bight

Four (4) credits. May be repeated for credit with change in content. 2 day ship expedition and 13, two-hour seminar sessions required. 

The course would involve working in small interdisciplinary teams toward a common theme, hypothesis or problem that the cruise plan would be designed to address. Some potential interdisciplinary themes discussed include:

  1. Carbon and/or pollutant transfer from estuaries to the open ocean

  2. Frontal processes (shelf break front) - interesting productivity, gas exchange, etc

  3. Lower trophic level food web structure changes as you move offshore - trends and patterns

  4. Benthic pelagic coupling of organic material in various physical settings from shallow shelf to deep shelf

 

Through this activity they would learn the basic skills needed to (in no particular order): 

1) constrain a problem/question like this with the tools/techniques and resources at hand

3) test hypotheses

4) sample collection techniques in the ocean

5) quality control skills in data collection techniques

6) estimate fluxes across interfaces (air-water; sediment-water)

7) work together as an interdisciplinary team toward a common goal

 

The course for the fall of 2020 will include classes that would meet for 1.5 hours twice a week. The class/lab sessions would include readings, discussions and lectures and cover (1) oceanography of the study area; (2) plans and procedures for the measurements, sampling and data collection techniques on the cruise; (4) Quality control methods; (5) Synthesis of the cruise data; (6) Writing up a final proposal for the following cruise. The bulk of the analysis will be done on the cruise with limited analysis time required of the students when back from their cruise. One possible final project idea is that they write a proposal for the next course offered as their final project. This way the group with the strongest proposal could “win” the opportunity to go on the cruise a second time in a more senior role, and we may end up with projects for the students to focus on the next year the course is offered.

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