Building off of her Ph.D. and postdoctoral research in Marine Sciences, Kaylan (Kate) Randolph, from the Dierssen COLORS Lab, was recently awarded a NASA New Investigator Program in Earth Sciences grant to characterize the hyperspectral reflectance of breaking waves with subsurface turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rates, and air entrainment as a function of physical forcing conditions. Kate (pictured on the R.V. Laurence Gould in Punta Arenas, Chile with collaborator Ale Cifuentes-Lorenzen) will be deploying above-water autonomous hyperspectral radiometers from the Air-Sea Interaction Tower at Martha’s Vineyard Coastal Observatory (WHOI). These measurements will be paired with subsurface acoustical and optical instrumentation to tackle the physics behind ocean color. Kate’s ongoing efforts to study ocean surface physics also include active collaborations with Chris Zappa at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Ale Cifuentes-Lorenzen at UConn (pending NSF).

Meghan Bartels from Newsweek recently interviewed University of Connecticut professor Heidi Dierssen for an article detailing the potential to use satellite imagery to estimate floating marine plastics. Dr. Dierssen recently published a paper with her postdoctoral student Dr. Shungu Garaba in Remote Sensing of the Environment analyzing the spectral properties and potential for remote sensing of marine macro- and microplastics as part of a NASA-funded project for the proposed hyperspectral satellite mission PACE.   Bartels writes:  “To know that it’s actually plastic and not something else floating or even a bubble or a whitecap, we have to have more of a sense of the spectral fingerprint and what’s unique to plastics,” Dierssen said. “It’s going to be very challenging.”

Read the complete article here: http://www.newsweek.com/theres-so-much-plastic-oceans-scientists-want-study-it-space-853787

Professor Heidi Dierssen and postdoctoral scholar Dr. Kaylan Randolph were coauthors on a new paper in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society describing a large interdisciplinary experiment airborne campaign in the Southern Ocean.  They evaluated satellite and airborne remote sensing measurements to investigate biogeochemical and physical processes driving air–sea exchange of CO2, O2, and reactive biogenic gases in the Southern Ocean.

https://journals.ametsoc.org/toc/bams/current

The ocean is filled with a myriad of life forms, but many people don’t think of the shoreline itself as “living.” Through a new project, James O’Donnell, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Connecticut, and collaborators from Sacred Heart University will collect data and develop statistical measures to improve tracking of Connecticut’s living shoreline projects.

Almost 30 members of the Department of Marine Sciences attended the 2018 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Portland, Oregon last month. The weeklong conference (February 11-16, 2018) brought together close to 4,000 attendees and covered all topics of oceanography, and other related fields. Many graduate students presented posters and gave oral presentations throughout the week. Professors, post-docs, and research staff presented their work as well. A handful also attended the 4^th US Ocean Acidification PI Meeting held the days following the conference.

Following are those who attended:

Allison Byrd, graduate student

Steven Deignan-Schmidt, graduate student

Michelle Fogarty, graduate student

Jessica Hinckley, undergraduate student

Molly James, graduate student

Yan Jia, graduate student

Christopher Murray, graduate student

Veronica Rollinson, graduate student

Allison Staniec, graduate student

Qiang Sun (1) (2), graduate student

Heidi Yeh, graduate student

Alejandro Cifuentes-Lorenzen, postdoctoral research associate

Emma Cross, postdoctoral research associate

Hayley DeHart, research technician

Lindsey Potts, research technician

Jennifer Questel, postdoctoral research associate

Brandon Russell, former postdoctoral research associate

Peter L Ruffino, research technician

Sydney Twarz, research technician

Holly Westbrook, research technician

Hannes Baumann (1) (2) (3), assistant professor

Ann Bucklin, professor

Hans Dam, professor

James Edson, professor emeritus

Melanie Fewings, assistant professor

Julie Granger, associate professor

Edward Monahan, professor emeritus

Samantha Siedlecki, assistant professor

Penny Vlahos, associate professor

Michael Whitney, associate professor