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  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution  (60)
  • Oxford University Press
  • 2020-2023  (101)
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  • 1
    Publication Date: 2022-01-07
    Description: Intense bottom-ice algal blooms, often dominated by diatoms, are an important source of food for grazers, organic matter for export during sea ice melt, and dissolved organic carbon. Sea-ice diatoms have a number of adaptations, including accumulation of compatible solutes, that allows them to inhabit this highly variable environment characterized by extremes in temperature, salinity, and light. In addition to protecting them from extreme conditions, these compounds present a labile, nutrient-rich source of organic matter, and include precursors to climate active compounds (e.g., dimethyl sulfide [DMS]), which are likely regulated with environmental change. Here, intracellular concentrations of 45 metabolites were quantified in three sea-ice diatom species and were compared to two temperate diatom species, with a focus on compatible solutes and free amino acid pools. There was a large diversity of metabolite concentrations between diatoms with no clear pattern identifiable for sea-ice species. Concentrations of some compatible solutes (isethionic acid, homarine) approached 1 M in the sea-ice diatoms, Fragilariopsis cylindrus and Navicula cf. perminuta, but not in the larger sea-ice diatom, Nitzschia lecointei or in the temperate diatom species. The differential use of compatible solutes in sea-ice diatoms suggests different adaptive strategies and highlights which small organic compounds may be important in polar biogeochemical cycles.
    Type: Article , PeerReviewed
    Format: text
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  • 2
    Publication Date: 2022-03-02
    Description: Crystalline rocks can produce dangerous radiation levels on the basis of their content in radioisotopes. Here, we report radiological data from 10 metamorphic and igneous rock samples collected from the crystalline basement of the Peloritani Mountains (southern Italy). In order to evaluate the radiological properties of these rocks, the gamma radiation and the radon emanation have been measured. Moreover, since some of these rocks are employed as building materials, we assess the potential hazard for population connected to their use. Gamma spectroscopy was used to measure the 226Ra, 232Th and 40K activity concentration, whereas the radon emanation was investigated by using a RAD 7 detector. The results show 226Ra, 232Th and 40K activity concentration values ranging from (17 ± 4) to (56 ± 8) Bq kg-1, (14 ± 3) to (77 ± 14) Bq kg-1 and (167 ± 84) to (1760 ± 242) Bq kg-1, respectively. Values of the annual effective dose equivalent outdoor range from 0.035 to 0.152 mSv y-1, whereas the gamma index is in the range of 0.22-0.98. The 222Rn emanation coefficient and the 222Rn surface exhalation rate vary from (0.63 ± 0.3) to (8.27 ± 1.6)% and from (0.12 ± 0.03) to (2.75 ± 0.17) Bq m-2 h-1, respectively. The indoor radon derived from the building use of these rocks induces an approximate contribution to the annual effective dose ranging from 8 to 176 μSv y-1. All the obtained results suggest that the crystalline rocks from the Peloritani Mountains are not harmful for the residential population, even though they induce annual effective doses due to terrestrial gamma radiation above the worldwide average values. Moreover, their use as building materials does not produce significant health hazards connected to the indoor radon exposure.
    Description: Published
    Description: 452–464
    Description: 6A. Geochimica per l'ambiente e geologia medica
    Description: JCR Journal
    Repository Name: Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV)
    Type: article
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  • 3
    Publication Date: 2022-03-07
    Description: The Pollino range is a region of slow deformation where earthquakes generally nucleate on low-angle normal faults. Recent studies have mapped fault structures and identified fluid related dynamics responsible for historical and recent seismicity in the area. Here, we apply the coda-normalization method at multiple frequencies and scales to image the 3-D P-wave attenuation (QP) properties of its slowly deforming fault network. The wide-scale average attenuation properties of the Pollino range are typical for a stable continental block, with a dependence of QP on frequency of Q−1 P = (0.0011   0.0008) f (0.36 0.32). Using only waveforms comprised in the area of seismic swarms, the dependence of attenuation on frequency increases [Q−1 P = (0.0373   0.0011) f (−0.59 0.01)], as expected when targeting seismically active faults. A shallow very-low-attenuation anomaly (max depth of 4–5 km) caps the seismicity recorded within the western cluster 1 of the Pollino seismic sequence (2012, maximum magnitude Mw = 5.1). High-attenuation volumes below this anomaly are likely related to fluid storage and comprise the western and northern portions of cluster 1 and the Mercure basin. These anomalies are constrained to the NW by a sharp low-attenuation interface, corresponding to the transition towards the eastern unit of the Apennine Platform under the Lauria mountains. The low-seismicity volume between cluster 1 and cluster 2 (maximum magnitude Mw = 4.3, east of the primary) shows diffuse low-to-average attenuation features. There is no clear indication of fluid-filled pathways between the two clusters resolvable at our resolution. In this volume, the attenuation values are anyway lower than in recognized low-attenuation blocks, like the Lauria Mountain and Pollino Range. As the volume develops in a region marked at surface by small-scale cross-faulting, it suggests no actual barrier between clusters, more likely a system of small locked fault patches that can break in the future. Our model loses resolution at depth, but it can still resolve a 5-to-15-km-deep high-attenuation anomaly that underlies the Castrovillari basin. This anomaly is an ideal deep source for the SE-to-NW migration of historical seismicity. Our novel deep structural maps support the hypothesis that the Pollino sequence has been caused by a mechanism of deep and lateral fluid-induced migration.
    Description: Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Oil and Gas. University of Aberdeen.
    Description: Published
    Description: 536–547
    Description: 4T. Sismicità dell'Italia
    Description: JCR Journal
    Keywords: body waves ; seismic attenuation ; seismic tomography ; 04.06. Seismology
    Repository Name: Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV)
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  • 4
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution May 2020.
    Description: Contemporary scientific exploration most often takes place in highly remote and dangerous environments, such as in the deep sea and on other planets. These environments are very hostile to humans, which makes robotic exploration the first and often the only option. However, they also impose restrictive limits on how much communication is possible, creating challenges in implementing remote command and control. We propose an approach to enable more efficient autonomous robot-based scientific exploration of remote environments despite these limits on human-robot communication. We find this requires the robot to have a spatial observation model that can predict where to find various phenomena, a reward model which can measure how relevant these phenomena are to the scientific mission objectives, and an adaptive path planner which can use this information to plan high scientific value paths. We identified and addressed two main gaps: the lack of a general-purpose means for spatial observation modelling, and the challenge in learning a reward model based on images online given the limited bandwidth constraints. Our first key contribution is enabling general-purpose spatial observation modelling through spatio-temporal topic models, which are well suited for unsupervised scientific exploration of novel environments. Our next key contribution is an active learning criterion which enables learning an image-based reward model during an exploration mission by communicating with the science team efficiently. We show that using these together can result in a robotic explorer collecting up to 230% more scientifically relevant observations in a single mission than when using lawnmower trajectories.
    Description: This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Award #1734400, as well as by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). The author would like to thank both organizations for their support.
    Keywords: Robotics ; Autonomous ; Exploration
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Thesis
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  • 5
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Physical Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2020.
    Description: A detailed understanding of the intensity and three-dimensional spatial distribution of diabatic abyssal turbulence is germane to understanding the abyssal branch of the global overturning circulation. This thesis addresses the issue through 1) an investigation of the dynamics of an abyssal boundary layer and through 2) the construction of a probabilistic finescale parameterization using mixture density networks (MDNs). A boundary layer, formed by the interaction of heaving isopycnals by the tide and viscous/adiabatic boundary conditions, is investigated through direct numerical simulations (DNS) and Floquet analysis. Turbulence is sustained throughout the tidal period in the DNS on extra-critical slopes characterized by small slope Burger numbers, leading to the formation of turbulent stratified Stokes-Ekman layers. Floquet analysis suggests that the boundary layers are unstable to disturbances to the vorticity component aligned with the across-isobath tidal velocity on extra-critical slopes. MDNs, trained on microstructure observations, are used to construct probabilistic finescale parameterization dependent on the finescale vertical kinetic energy (VKE), N2f2, , and both variables. The MDN model predictions are as accurate as conventional parameterizations, but also predict the underlying probability density function of the dissipation rate as a function of the dependent parameters.
    Description: My doctoral studies in the WHOI/MIT Joint Program were funded by the National Science Foundation (OCE-1657870) and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program.
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Thesis
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  • 6
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution May 2020.
    Description: Developing accurate and computationally efficient models for ocean acoustics is inherently challenging due to several factors including the complex physical processes and the need to provide results on a large range of scales. Furthermore, the ocean itself is an inherently dynamic environment within the multiple scales. Even if we could measure the exact properties at a specific instant, the ocean will continue to change in the smallest temporal scales, ever increasing the uncertainty in the ocean prediction. In this work, we explore ocean acoustic prediction from the basics of the wave equation and its derivation. We then explain the deterministic implementations of the Parabolic Equation, Ray Theory, and Level Sets methods for ocean acoustic computation. We investigate methods for evolving stochastic fields using direct Monte Carlo, Empirical Orthogonal Functions, and adaptive Dynamically Orthogonal (DO) differential equations. As we evaluate the potential of Reduced-Order Models for stochastic ocean acoustics prediction, for the first time, we derive and implement the stochastic DO differential equations for Ray Tracing (DO-Ray), starting from the differential equations of Ray theory. With a stochastic DO-Ray implementation, we can start from non-Gaussian environmental uncertainties and compute the stochastic acoustic ray fields in a reduced order fashion, all while preserving the complex statistics of the ocean environment and the nonlinear relations with stochastic ray tracing. We outline a deterministic Ray-Tracing model, validate our implementation, and perform Monte Carlo stochastic computation as a basis for comparison. We then present the stochastic DO-Ray methodology with detailed derivations. We develop varied algorithms and discuss implementation challenges and solutions, using again direct Monte Carlo for comparison. We apply the stochastic DO-Ray methodology to three idealized cases of stochastic sound-speed profiles (SSPs): constant-gradients, uncertain deep-sound channel, and a varied sonic layer depth. Through this implementation with non-Gaussian examples, we observe the ability to represent the stochastic ray trace field in a reduced order fashion.
    Description: Office of Naval Research Grants N00014-19-1-2664 (Task Force Ocean: DEEP-AI) and N00014-19-1-2693 (INBDA)
    Keywords: Stochastic Processes ; Acoustic Wave Propagation ; Acoustic Rays
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Thesis
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  • 7
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: © The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Carroll, E. L., Ott, P. H., McMillan, L. F., Galletti Vernazzani, B., Neveceralova, P., Vermeulen, E., Gaggiotti, O. E., Andriolo, A., Baker, C. S., Bamford, C., Best, P., Cabrera, E., Calderan, S., Chirife, A., Fewster, R. M., Flores, P. A. C., Frasier, T., Freitas, T. R. O., Groch, K., Hulva, P., Kennedy, A., Leaper, R., Leslie, M. S., Moore, M., Oliveira, L., Seger, J., Stepien, E. N., Valenzuela, L. O., Zerbini, A., & Jackson, J. A. Genetic diversity and connectivity of southern right whales (Eubalaena australis) found in the Brazil and Chile-Peru wintering grounds and the South Georgia (Islas Georgias del Sur) feeding ground. Journal of Heredity, 111(3), (2020): 263-276, doi:10.1093/jhered/esaa010.
    Description: As species recover from exploitation, continued assessments of connectivity and population structure are warranted to provide information for conservation and management. This is particularly true in species with high dispersal capacity, such as migratory whales, where patterns of connectivity could change rapidly. Here we build on a previous long-term, large-scale collaboration on southern right whales (Eubalaena australis) to combine new (nnew) and published (npub) mitochondrial (mtDNA) and microsatellite genetic data from all major wintering grounds and, uniquely, the South Georgia (Islas Georgias del Sur: SG) feeding grounds. Specifically, we include data from Argentina (npub mtDNA/microsatellite = 208/46), Brazil (nnew mtDNA/microsatellite = 50/50), South Africa (nnew mtDNA/microsatellite = 66/77, npub mtDNA/microsatellite = 350/47), Chile–Peru (nnew mtDNA/microsatellite = 1/1), the Indo-Pacific (npub mtDNA/microsatellite = 769/126), and SG (npub mtDNA/microsatellite = 8/0, nnew mtDNA/microsatellite = 3/11) to investigate the position of previously unstudied habitats in the migratory network: Brazil, SG, and Chile–Peru. These new genetic data show connectivity between Brazil and Argentina, exemplified by weak genetic differentiation and the movement of 1 genetically identified individual between the South American grounds. The single sample from Chile–Peru had an mtDNA haplotype previously only observed in the Indo-Pacific and had a nuclear genotype that appeared admixed between the Indo-Pacific and South Atlantic, based on genetic clustering and assignment algorithms. The SG samples were clearly South Atlantic and were more similar to the South American than the South African wintering grounds. This study highlights how international collaborations are critical to provide context for emerging or recovering regions, like the SG feeding ground, as well as those that remain critically endangered, such as Chile–Peru.
    Description: This work was supported by the EU BEST 2.0 medium grant 1594 and UK DARWIN PLUS grant 057 and additional funding from the World Wildlife Fund GB107301. The collection of the Chile–Peru sample was supported by the Global Greengrants Fund and the Pacific Whale Foundation. The collection of the Brazilian samples was supported through grants by the Brazilian National Research Council to Paulo H. Ott (CNPq proc. n° 144064/98-7) and Paulo A.C. Flores (CNPq proc. n° 146609/1999-9) and with support from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF-Brazil). The collection of the South African samples was supported by the Global Greengrants Fund, the Pacific Whale Foundation and Charles University Grant Agency (1140217). E.L.C. was partially supported by a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship from the Royal Society of New Zealand. This study forms part of the Ecosystems component of the British Antarctic Survey Polar Sciences for Planet Earth Programme, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council.
    Keywords: population structure ; connectivity ; migration ; gene flow
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Article
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  • 8
    Publication Date: 2022-03-16
    Description: This article has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Journal International ©: The Authors 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy.
    Description: In a recent study (Jozinovi\'c et al, 2020) we showed that convolutional neural networks (CNNs) applied to network seismic traces can be used for rapid prediction of earthquake peak ground motion intensity measures (IMs) at distant stations using only recordings from stations near the epicenter. The predictions are made without any previous knowledge concerning the earthquake location and magnitude. This approach differs from the standard procedure adopted by earthquake early warning systems (EEWSs) that rely on location and magnitude information. In the previous study, we used 10 s, raw, multistation waveforms for the 2016 earthquake sequence in central Italy for 915 events (CI dataset). The CI dataset has a large number of spatially concentrated earthquakes and a dense station network. In this work, we applied the CNN model to an area around the VIRGO gravitational waves observatory sited near Pisa, Italy. In our initial application of the technique, we used a dataset consisting of 266 earthquakes recorded by 39 stations. We found that the CNN model trained using this smaller dataset performed worse compared to the results presented in the original study by Jozinovi\'c et al. (2020). To counter the lack of data, we adopted transfer learning (TL) using two approaches: first, by using a pre-trained model built on the CI dataset and, next, by using a pre-trained model built on a different (seismological) problem that has a larger dataset available for training. We show that the use of TL improves the results in terms of outliers, bias, and variability of the residuals between predicted and true IMs values. We also demonstrate that adding knowledge of station positions as an additional layer in the neural network improves the results. The possible use for EEW is demonstrated by the times for the warnings that would be received at the station PII.
    Description: RISE (Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, grant agreement No.821115)
    Description: Published
    Description: 704–718
    Description: 5T. Sismologia, geofisica e geologia per l'ingegneria sismica
    Description: JCR Journal
    Keywords: Physics - Geophysics; Physics - Geophysics ; machine learning ; ground motion prediction ; seismology
    Repository Name: Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV)
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  • 9
    Publication Date: 2021-12-24
    Description: This article has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Journal International ©: The Authors 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy.
    Description: Ambient-noise records from the AlpArray network are used to measure Rayleigh wave phase velocities between more than 150,000 station pairs. From these, azimuthally anisotropic phase-velocity maps are obtained by applying the Eikonal tomography method. Several synthetic tests are shown to study the bias in the Ψ2 anisotropy. There are two main groups of bias, the first one caused by interference between refracted/reflected waves and the appearance of secondary wavefronts that affect the phase travel-time measurements. This bias can be reduced if the amplitude field can be estimated correctly. Another source of error is related to the incomplete reconstruction of the travel-time field that is only sparsely sampled due to the receiver locations. Both types of bias scale with the magnitude of the velocity heterogeneities. Most affected by the spurious Ψ2 anisotropy are areas inside and at the border of low-velocity zones. In the isotropic velocity distribution, most of the bias cancels out if the azimuthal coverage is good. Despite the lack of resolution in many parts of the surveyed area, we identify a number of anisotropic structures that are robust: in the central Alps, we find a layered anisotropic structure, arc-parallel at midcrustal depths and arc-perpendicular in the lower crust. In contrast, in the eastern Alps, the pattern is more consistently E-W oriented which we relate to the eastward extrusion. The northern Alpine forleand exhibits a preferential anisotropic orientation that is similar to SKS observations in the lowermost crust and uppermost mantle.
    Description: German Science Foundation (SPP-2017, Project Ha 2403/21-1); Swiss National Science Foundation SINERGIA Project CRSII2-154434/1 (Swiss-AlpArray); Progetto Pianeta Dinamico, finanziamento MUR-INGV, Task S2 – 2021
    Description: Published
    Description: 151–170
    Description: 1T. Struttura della Terra
    Description: JCR Journal
    Keywords: Seismic anisotropy ; Seismic interferometry ; Seismic tomography ; Wave propagation ; Continental tectonics: compressional ; 04.01. Earth Interior ; 04.06. Seismology
    Repository Name: Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV)
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  • 10
    Publication Date: 2021-12-15
    Description: This article has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Journal International ©: The Authors 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy.
    Description: To understand the seismotectonics and the seismic hazard of the study sector of the Northern Apennines (Italy), one of the most important earthquakes of magnitude Mw = 6.5 which struck the Lunigiana and Garfagnana areas (Tuscany) on 7 September 1920 should be studied. Given the early instrumental epoch of the event, neither geometric and kinematic information on the fault-source nor its fault-plane solution were available. Both areas were candidates for hosting the source fault and there was uncertainty between a normal fault with Apenninic direction or an anti-Apenninic strike-slip. We retrieved 11 focal parameters (including the fault-plane solution) of the 1920 earthquake. Only macroseismic intensity information (from 499 inhabited centres) through the KF-NGA inversion technique was used. This technique uses a Kinematic model of the earthquake source and speeds up the calculation by a Genetic Algorithm with Niching. The result is a pure dip-slip focal solution. The intrinsic ambiguities of the KF-NGA method (±180° on the rake angle; choice of the fault plane between the two nodal planes) were solved with field and seismotectonic evidence. The earthquake was generated by a normal fault (rake angle = 265° ± 8°) with an Apennine direction (114° ± 5°) and dipping 38° ± 6° towards SW. The likely candidate for hosting the source-fault in 1920 is the Compione-Comano fault that borders the NE edge of the Lunigiana graben. The KF-NGA algorithm proved to be invaluable for studying the kinematics of early instrumental earthquakes and allowed us to uniquely individuate, for the first time ever, the seismogenic source of the 1920 earthquake. Our findings have implications in hazard computation and seismotectonic contexts.
    Description: Published
    Description: 1465–1477
    Description: 4T. Sismicità dell'Italia
    Description: JCR Journal
    Keywords: Inverse theory ; Body waves ; Earthquake source observations ; Seismicity and tectonics ; Dynamics: seismotectonics ; Fractures, faults, and high strain deformation zones ; 04.06. Seismology
    Repository Name: Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV)
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  • 11
    Publication Date: 2021-12-22
    Description: Systematic variations in the crystal cargo and whole-rock isotopic compositions of mantle-derived basalts in the intraplate Dunedin Volcano (New Zealand) indicate the influence of a complex mantle-to-crust polybaric plumbing system. Basaltic rocks define a compositional spectrum from low-alkali basalts through mid-alkali basalts to high-alkali basalts. High-alkali basalts display clinopyroxene crystals with sector (hourglass) and oscillatory zoning (Mg#61–82) as well as Fe-rich green cores (Mg#43–69), whereas low-alkali basalts are characterized by clinopyroxenes with unzoned overgrowths (Mg#69–83) on resorbed mafic cores (Mg#78–88), coexisting with reversely zoned plagioclase crystals (An43–68 to An60–84 from core to rim). Complex magma dynamics are indicated by distinctive compositional variations in clinopyroxene phenocrysts, with Cr-rich zones (Mg#74–87) indicating continuous recharge by more mafic magmas. Crystallization of olivine, clinopyroxene and titanomagnetite occurred within a polybaric plumbing system extending from upper mantle to mid-crustal depths (485–1059 MPa and 1147–1286°C), whereas crystallization of plagioclase with subordinate clinopyroxene and titanomagnetite proceeded towards shallower crustal levels. The compositions of high-alkali basalts and mid-alkali basalts resemble those of ocean island basalts and are characterized by FOZO-HIMU isotopic signatures (87Sr/86Sri = 0.70277–0.70315, 143Nd/144Ndi = 0.51286–0.51294 and 206Pb/204Pb = 19.348–20.265), whereas low-alkali basalts have lower incompatible element abundances and isotopic compositions trending towards EMII (87Sr/86Sri = 0.70327–70397, 143Nd/144Ndi = 0.51282–0.51286 and 206Pb/204Pb = 19.278–19.793). High- and mid-alkali basalt magmas mostly crystallized in the lower crust, whereas low-alkali basalt magma recorded deeper upper mantle clinopyroxene crystallization before eruption. The variable alkaline character and isotope composition may result from interaction of low-alkaline melts derived from the asthenosphere with melts derived from lithospheric mantle, possibly initiated by asthenospheric melt percolation. The transition to more alkaline compositions was induced by variable degrees of melting of metasomatic lithologies in the lithospheric mantle, leading to eruption of predominantly small-volume, high-alkali magmas at the periphery of the volcano. Moreover, the lithosphere imposed a filtering effect on the alkalinity of these intraplate magmas. As a consequence, the eruption of low-alkali basalts with greater asthenospheric input was concentrated at the centre of the volcano, where the plumbing system was more developed.
    Description: Published
    Description: egab062
    Description: 2V. Struttura e sistema di alimentazione dei vulcani
    Description: 3V. Proprietà chimico-fisiche dei magmi e dei prodotti vulcanici
    Description: 4V. Processi pre-eruttivi
    Description: JCR Journal
    Keywords: alkali basalts ; Dunedin Volcano ; thermobarometry ; primary magma ; lithospheric mantle filter ; Igneous Petrology ; Thermobarometry ; Mantle melting and metasomatism ; Magmatic plumbing systems
    Repository Name: Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV)
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  • 12
    Publication Date: 2022-10-26
    Description: © The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Johnson, W. M., Alexander, H., Bier, R. L., Miller, D. R., Muscarella, M. E., Pitz, K. J., & Smith, H. Auxotrophic interactions: A stabilizing attribute of aquatic microbial communities? FEMS Microbiology Ecology, (2020): fiaa115, doi: 10.1093/femsec/fiaa115.
    Description: Auxotrophy, or an organism's requirement for an exogenous source of an organic molecule, is widespread throughout species and ecosystems. Auxotrophy can result in obligate interactions between organisms, influencing ecosystem structure and community composition. We explore how auxotrophy-induced interactions between aquatic microorganisms affect microbial community structure and stability. While some studies have documented auxotrophy in aquatic microorganisms, these studies are not widespread, and we therefore do not know the full extent of auxotrophic interactions in aquatic environments. Current theoretical and experimental work suggests that auxotrophy links microbial community members through a complex web of metabolic dependencies. We discuss the proposed ways in which auxotrophy may enhance or undermine the stability of aquatic microbial communities, highlighting areas where our limited understanding of these interactions prevents us from being able to predict the ecological implications of auxotrophy. Finally, we examine an example of auxotrophy in harmful algal blooms to place this often theoretical discussion in a field context where auxotrophy may have implications for the development and robustness of algal bloom communities. We seek to draw attention to the relationship between auxotrophy and community stability in an effort to encourage further field and theoretical work that explores the underlying principles of microbial interactions.
    Description: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [OCE-1356192].
    Keywords: Auxotrophy ; Microbial community stability ; Microbial interactions ; Aquatic
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 13
    Publication Date: 2022-10-26
    Description: © The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Keller, A. G., Apprill, A., Lebaron, P., Robbins, J., Romano, T. A., Overton, E., Rong, Y., Yuan, R., Pollara, S., & Whalen, K. E. Characterizing the culturable surface microbiomes of diverse marine animals. FEMS Microbiology Ecology, 97(4), (2021): fiab040, https://doi.org/10.1093/femsec/fiab040.
    Description: Biofilm-forming bacteria have the potential to contribute to the health, physiology, behavior and ecology of the host and serve as its first line of defense against adverse conditions in the environment. While metabarcoding and metagenomic information furthers our understanding of microbiome composition, fewer studies use cultured samples to study the diverse interactions among the host and its microbiome, as cultured representatives are often lacking. This study examines the surface microbiomes cultured from three shallow-water coral species and two whale species. These unique marine animals place strong selective pressures on their microbial symbionts and contain members under similar environmental and anthropogenic stress. We developed an intense cultivation procedure, utilizing a suite of culture conditions targeting a rich assortment of biofilm-forming microorganisms. We identified 592 microbial isolates contained within 15 bacterial orders representing 50 bacterial genera, and two fungal species. Culturable bacteria from coral and whale samples paralleled taxonomic groups identified in culture-independent surveys, including 29% of all bacterial genera identified in the Megaptera novaeangliae skin microbiome through culture-independent methods. This microbial repository provides raw material and biological input for more nuanced studies which can explore how members of the microbiome both shape their micro-niche and impact host fitness.
    Description: Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation (Biological Oceanography) award #1657808 and National Institutes of Health grants 1R21-AI119311–01 to K. E. Whalen, as well as funding from the Koshland Integrated Natural Science Center and Green Fund at Haverford College. This constitutes scientific manuscript #298 from the Sea Research Foundation.
    Keywords: Bacteria ; SSU rRNA ; Coral ; Whale ; Microbiome ; Skin
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 14
    Publication Date: 2022-10-26
    Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Wang, P., Huang, C., Lin, J., Jian, Z., Sun, Z., & Zhao, M. The South China Sea is not a mini-Atlantic: plate-edge rifting vs intra-plate rifting. National Science Review, 6(5), (2019): 902-913, doi:10.1093/nsr/nwz135.
    Description: The South China Sea, as ‘a non-volcanic passive margin basin’ in the Pacific, has often been considered as a small-scale analogue of the Atlantic. The recent ocean drilling in the northern South China Sea margin found, however, that the Iberian model of non-volcanic rifted margin from the Atlantic does not apply to the South China Sea. In this paper, we review a variety of rifted basins and propose to discriminate two types of rifting basins: plate-edge type such as the South China Sea and intra-plate type like the Atlantic. They not only differ from each other in structure, formation process, lifespan and geographic size, but also occur at different stages of the Wilson cycle. The intra-plate rifting occurred in the Mesozoic and gave rise to large oceans, whereas the plate-edge rifting took place mainly in the mid-Cenozoic, with three-quarters of the basins concentrated in the Western Pacific. As a member of the Western Pacific system of marginal seas, the South China Sea should be studied not in isolation on its origin and evolution, but in a systematic context to include also its neighboring counterparts.
    Description: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China as a part of the ‘South China Sea Deep’ Project (91128000).
    Keywords: Rifting ; Marginal basin ; Passive margin ; South China Sea ; Western Pacific ; Subduction
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 15
    Publication Date: 2022-10-28
    Description: Relative relocation methods are commonly used to precisely relocate earthquake clusters consisting of similar waveforms. Repeating waveforms are often recorded at volcanoes, where, however, the crust structure is expected to contain strong heterogeneities and therefore the 1D velocity model assumption that is made in most location strategies is not likely to describe reality. A peculiar cluster of repeating low-frequency seismic events was recorded on the south flank of Katla volcano (Iceland) from 2011. As the hypocentres are located at the rim of the glacier, the seismicity may be due to volcanic or glacial processes. Information on the size and shape of the cluster may help constraining the source process. The extreme similarity of waveforms points to a very small spatial distribution of hypocentres. In order to extract meaningful information about size and shape of the cluster, we minimize uncertainty by optimizing the cross-correlation measurements and relative-relocation process. With a synthetic test we determine the best parameters for differential-time measurements and estimate their uncertainties, specifically for each waveform. We design a relocation strategy to work without a predefined velocity model, by formulating and inverting the problem to seek changes in both location and slowness, thus accounting for azimuth, take-off angles and velocity deviations from a 1D model. We solve the inversion explicitly in order to propagate data errors through the calculation. With this approach we are able to resolve a source volume few tens of meters wide on horizontal directions and around 100 meters in depth. There is no suggestion that the hypocentres lie on a single fault plane and the depth distribution indicates that their source is unlikely to be related to glacial processes as the ice thickness is not expected to exceed few tens of meters in the source area.
    Description: Published
    Description: 1244–1257
    Description: 5T. Sismologia, geofisica e geologia per l'ingegneria sismica
    Description: JCR Journal
    Keywords: Physics - Geophysics; Physics - Geophysics
    Repository Name: Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV)
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  • 16
    Publication Date: 2022-11-10
    Description: © The Author(s), 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Sassenhagen, I., Erdner, D., Lougheed, B., Richlen, M., & SjÖqvist, C. Estimating genotypic richness and proportion of identical multi-locus genotypes in aquatic microalgal populations. Journal of Plankton Research, 44(4), (2022): 559-572, https://doi.org/10.1093/plankt/fbac034.
    Description: The majority of microalgal species reproduce asexually, yet population genetic studies rarely find identical multi-locus genotypes (MLG) in microalgal blooms. Instead, population genetic studies identify large genotypic diversity in most microalgal species. This paradox of frequent asexual reproduction but low number of identical genotypes hampers interpretations of microalgal genotypic diversity. We present a computer model for estimating, for the first time, the number of distinct MLGs by simulating microalgal population composition after defined exponential growth periods. The simulations highlighted the effects of initial genotypic diversity, sample size and intraspecific differences in growth rates on the probability of isolating identical genotypes. We estimated the genotypic richness for five natural microalgal species with available high-resolution population genetic data and monitoring-based growth rates, indicating 500 000 to 2 000 000 distinct genotypes for species with few observed clonal replicates (〈5%). Furthermore, our simulations indicated high variability in genotypic richness over time and among microalgal species. Genotypic richness was also strongly impacted by intraspecific variability in growth rates. The probability of finding identical MLGs and sampling a representative fraction of genotypes decreased noticeably with smaller sample sizes, challenging the detection of differences in genotypic diversity with typical isolate numbers in the field.
    Description: This work was supported by the Olle Engkvist foundation [200-0564 to I.S.]; the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) [2018-04992 to B.C.L.]; the Academy of Finland [321609 to C.S.]; the National Science Foundation [NSF OCE-1841811 to D.L.E. and M.L.R.]; and the National Institute of Environmental Health [NIEHS P01ES028949 to M.L.R.].
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 17
    Publication Date: 2022-06-24
    Description: © The Author(s), 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Page, H. N., Bahr, K. D., Cyronak, T., Jewett, E. B., Johnson, M. D., & McCoy, S. J. Responses of benthic calcifying algae to ocean acidification differ between laboratory and field settings. Ices Journal of Marine Science, 79(1), (2022): 1–11, https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsab232.
    Description: Accurately predicting the effects of ocean and coastal acidification on marine ecosystems requires understanding how responses scale from laboratory experiments to the natural world. Using benthic calcifying macroalgae as a model system, we performed a semi-quantitative synthesis to compare directional responses between laboratory experiments and field studies. Variability in ecological, spatial, and temporal scales across studies, and the disparity in the number of responses documented in laboratory and field settings, make direct comparisons difficult. Despite these differences, some responses, including community-level measurements, were consistent across laboratory and field studies. However, there were also mismatches in the directionality of many responses with more negative acidification impacts reported in laboratory experiments. Recommendations to improve our ability to scale responses include: (i) developing novel approaches to allow measurements of the same responses in laboratory and field settings, and (ii) researching understudied calcifying benthic macroalgal species and responses. Incorporating these guidelines into research programs will yield data more suitable for robust meta-analyses and will facilitate the development of ecosystem models that incorporate proper scaling of organismal responses to in situ acidification. This, in turn, will allow for more accurate predictions of future changes in ecosystem health and function in a rapidly changing natural climate.
    Description: We would like to thank the Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry Program for organizing the fourth U.S. Ocean Acidification Principal Investigators meeting, which is where this synthesis was conceived. HNP was a postdoctoral research fellow at Mote Marine Laboratory. MDJ is a postdoctoral scholar at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. SJM is a Norma J. Lang early career fellow of the Phycological Society of America.
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  • 18
    Publication Date: 2022-06-22
    Description: In this paper we simulate the earthquake that hit the city of L'Aquila on the 6th of April 2009 using SPEED (SPectral Elements in Elastodynamics with Discontinuous Galerkin), an open-source code able to simulate the propagation of seismic waves in complex three-dimensional (3D) domains. Our model includes an accurate 3D recon- struction of the Quaternary deposits, according to the most up-to-date data obtained from the Microzonation studies in Central Italy and a detailed model of the topography incorporated using a newly developed tool (May et al. 2021). The sensitivity of our results with respect to dfferent kinematic seismic sources is inves- tigated. The results obtained are in good agreement with the recordings at the available seismic stations at epicentral distances within a range of 20km. Finally, a blind source prediction scenario application shows a reasonably good agreement between simulations and recordings can be obtained by simulating stochastic rupture realizations with basic input data. These results, although limited to nine simulated scenarios, demonstrate that it is possible to obtain a satisfactory reconstruction of a ground shaking scenario employing a stochastic source constrained on a limited amount of ex-ante information. A similar approach can be used to model future and past earthquakes for which little or no information is typically available, with potential relevant implications for seismic risk assessment.
    Description: Published
    Description: 29–49
    Description: 3T. Fisica dei terremoti e Sorgente Sismica
    Description: JCR Journal
    Repository Name: Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV)
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  • 19
    Publication Date: 2022-06-22
    Description: This article has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Journal International ©: The Authors 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy.
    Description: On 29 December 2020, a shallow earthquake of magnitude Mw 6.4 struck northern Croatia, near the town of Petrinja, more than 24 hours after a strong foreshock (Ml 5). We formed a reconnaissance team of European geologists and engineers, from Croatia, Slovenia, France, Italy and Greece, rapidly deployed in the field to map the evidence of coseismic environmental effects. In the epicentral area, we recognized surface deformation, such as tectonic breaks along the earthquake source at the surface, liquefaction features (scattered in the fluvial plains of Kupa, Glina and Sava rivers), and slope failures, both caused by strong motion. Thanks to this concerted, collective and meticulous work, we were able to document and map a clear and unambiguous coseismic surface rupture associated with the main shock. The surface rupture appears discontinuous, consisting of multi-kilometer en échelon right stepping sections, along a NW-SE striking fault that we call the Petrinja-Pokupsko Fault (PPKF). The observed deformation features, in terms of kinematics and trace alignments, are consistent with slip on a right lateral fault, in agreement with the focal solution of the main shock. We found mole tracks, displacement on faults affecting natural features (e. g. drainage channels), scarplets, and more frequently breaks of anthropogenic markers (roads, fences). The surface rupture is observed over a length of ∼13 km from end-to-end, with a maximum displacement of 38 cm, and an average displacement of ∼10 cm. Moreover, the liquefaction extends over an area of nearly 600 km² around the epicenter. Typology of liquefaction features include sand blows, lateral spreading phenomenon along the road and river embankments, as well as sand ejecta of different grain size and matrix. Development of large and long fissures along the fluvial landforms, current or ancient, with massive ejections of sediments is pervasive. These features are sometimes accompanied by small horizontal displacements. Finally, the environmental effects of the earthquake appear to be reasonably consistent with the usual scaling relationships, in particular the surface faulting. This rupture of the ground occurred on or near traces of a fault that shows clear evidence of Quaternary activity. Further and detailed studies will be carried out to characterize this source and related faults in terms of future large earthquakes potential, for their integration into seismic hazard models.
    Description: Published
    Description: 1394–1418
    Description: 2T. Deformazione crostale attiva
    Description: JCR Journal
    Keywords: Seismicity and tectonics ; Earthquake hazards ; Coseismic effects ; M6.4 Petrinja earthquake (Croatia)
    Repository Name: Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV)
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  • 20
    Publication Date: 2022-09-01
    Description: In the last years the scientific literature has been enriched with new models of the Moho depth in the Antarctica Continent derived by the seismic reflection technique and refraction profiles, receiver functions and seismic surface waves, but also by gravimetric observations over the continent. In particular, the gravity satellite missions of the last two decades have provided data in this remote region of the Earth and have allowed the investigation of the crust properties. Meanwhile, other important contributions in this direction has been given by the fourth International Polar Year (IPY, 2007–2008) which started seismographic and geodetic networks of unprecedented duration and scale, including airborne gravimetry over largely unexplored Antarctic frontiers. In this study, a new model for the Antarctica Moho depths is proposed. This new estimation is based on no satellite gravity measures, thanks to the availability of the gravity database ANTGG2015, that collects gravity data from ground-base, airborne and shipborne campaigns. In this new estimate of the Moho depths the contribution of the gravity measures has been maximized reducing any correction of the gravity measures and avoiding constraints of the solution to seismological observations and to geological evidence. With this approach a pure gravimetric solution has been determined. The model obtained is pretty in agreement with other Moho models and thanks to the use of independent data it can be exploited also for cross-validating different Moho depths solutions.
    Description: Published
    Description: 1404–1420
    Description: 1T. Struttura della Terra
    Description: JCR Journal
    Keywords: Antarctica ; Moho ; Gravity inversion ; Collocation ; ANTGG2015
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  • 21
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    Oxford University Press
    In:  EPIC3Geophysical Journal International, Oxford University Press, 231, pp. 1959-1981
    Publication Date: 2022-09-16
    Description: Seismic reflection and refraction data were collected in 2007 and 2012 to reveal the crustal fabric on a single long composite profile offshore Prydz Bay, East Antarctica. A P-wave velocity model provides insights on the crustal fabric, and a gravity-constrained density model is used to describe the crustal and mantle structure. The models show that a 230-km- wide continent–ocean transition separates stretched continental from oceanic crust along our profile. While the oceanic crust close to the continent–ocean boundary is just 3.5–5 km thick, its thickness increases northwards towards the Southern Kerguelen Plateau to 12 km. This change is accompanied by thickening of a lower crustal layer with high P-wave velocities of up to 7.5 km s–1, marking intrusive rocks emplaced beneath the mid-ocean ridge under increasing influence of the Kerguelen plume. Joint interpretations of our crustal model, seismic reflection data and magnetic data sets constrain the age and extent of oceanic crust in the research area. Oceanic crust is shown to continue to around 160 km farther south than has been interpreted in previous data, with profound implications for plate kinematic models of the region. Finally, by combining our findings with a regional magnetic data compilation and regional seismic reflection data we propose a larger extent of oceanic crust in the Enderby Basin than previously known.
    Repository Name: EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
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  • 22
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Oceanography and Applied Ocean Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2020.
    Description: The redox cycling of oxygen between O2, water, and intermediate redox states including hydrogen peroxide and superoxide, has profound impact on the availability and distribution of dissolved O2, the habitability of the marine biosphere, and cellular metabolic and physiological reactions that utilize O2. The sum total of processes that produce, consume, and exchange atoms with O2 in the atmosphere, oceans, and subsurface leave their isotopic fingerprints on the abundance of the three stable isotopes of O2 in the environment. In this thesis, I explore two aspects of the oxygen cycle in the past and present. First, I investigate the ability of manganese (Mn) oxide minerals to capture and retain the oxygen isotopic signature of dissolved O2 during the oxidation of aqueous Mn(II) to Mn-oxide minerals. I determine that approximately half of the oxygen atoms in Mn(III,IV) oxides are directly incorporated from dissolved oxygen, and use isotope labeling techniques to further constrain how the dissolved oxygen isotope signature may be determined from that of Mn oxides. I perform an in-depth characterization of a ferromanganese crust from the central Pacific and, using triple oxygen isotope measurements, demonstrate that Mn oxides in ferromanganese crusts from around the world retain signatures of dissolved oxygen for at least 30 million years. I next turn to a previously unconsidered aspect of the global oxygen cycle: dark, extracellular superoxide production by marine microbes. I measure extracellular superoxide production rates by some of the ocean’s most abundant organisms. I use these rates along with previous measurements to estimate that extracellular superoxide production yields a net sink of 5-19% of marine dissolved oxygen. Ultimately, the degree to which superoxide production is a sink of oxygen lies in the fate of its primary decay product, hydrogen peroxide. I determine the range of oxidative and reductive decay of hydrogen peroxide across a range of environmental conditions in a meromictic pond, thus validating several assumptions from our global estimate. Altogether, this thesis illuminates a path toward investigating the oxygen cycle on million-year timescales in Earth’s recent past and demonstrates the importance of microbial superoxide production in the biogeochemical cycling of O2.
    Description: This work was funded by the following grants and organizations: NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship (NNX15AR62H), MIT Praecis Presidential Graduate Fellowship, NASA Exobiology (NNX15AM046), NSF-OCE grant 1355720, WHOI Ocean Ventures Fund, MIT Student Assistance Fund, WHOI Academic Programs Office, and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource. Use of the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Contract No. DEAC02-76SF00515.
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 23
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Chemical Oceanography and Microbial Biogeochemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2020.
    Description: Marine microbes play key roles in global biogeochemistry by mediating chemical transformations and linking nutrient cycles to one another. A major goal in oceanography is to predict the activity of marine microbes across disparate ocean ecosystems. Towards this end, molecular biomarkers are important tools in chemical oceanography because they allow for both the observation and interpretation of microbial behavior. In this thesis, I use molecular biomarkers to develop a holistic, systems biology approach to the study of marine microbes. I begin by identifying unique patterns in the biochemical sensory systems of marine bacteria and suggest that these represent a specific adaptation to the marine environment. Building from this, I focus on the prevalent marine nitrogen fixer Trichodesmium, whose activity affects global nitrogen, carbon, phosphorus, and trace metal cycles. A metaproteomic survey of Trichodesmium populations identified simultaneous iron and phosphate co-stress throughout the tropical and subtropical oceans, demonstrating that this is caused by the biophysical limits of membrane space and nutrient diffusion. Tackling the problem at a smaller scale, I investigated the metaproteomes of individual Trichodesmium colonies captured from a single field site, and identified significant variability related to iron acquisition from mineral particles. Next, I investigated diel proteomes of cultured Trichodesmium erythraeum sp. IMS101 to highlight its physiological complexity and understand how and why nitrogen fixation occurs in the day, despite the incompatibly of the nitrogenase enzyme with oxygen produced in photosynthesis. This thesis develops a fundamental understanding of how Trichodesmium and other organisms affect, and are affected by, their surroundings. It indicates that a reductionist approach in which environmental drivers are considered independently may not capture the full complexity of microbechemistry interactions. Future work can focus on benchmarking and calibration of the protein biomarkers identified here, as well as continued connection of systems biology frameworks to the study of ocean chemistry.
    Description: This work was supported by an MIT Walter A. Rosenblith Presidential Fellowship and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Program Fellowship under grant number 1122274 [N.Held]. This work was also supported by the WHOI Ocean Ventures fund [N.Held], Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation grant number 3782 [M.Saito], National Science Foundation grant numbers OCE-1657766 [M.Saito], EarthCube-1639714 [M.Saito], OCE-1658030 [M.Saito], and OCE-1260233 [M.Saito], and funding from the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) under grants awarded to C.M. (NE/N001079/1) and M.L. (NE/N001125/1). This thesis was completed during a writing residency at the Turkeyland Cove Foundation.
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 24
    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Lasek-Nesselquist, E., & Johnson, M. D. A phylogenomic approach to clarifying the relationship of Mesodinium within the Ciliophora: a case study in the complexity of mixed-species transcriptome analyses. Genome Biology and Evolution, 11(11), (2019): 3218–3232, doi:10.1093/gbe/evz233.
    Description: Recent high-throughput sequencing endeavors have yielded multigene/protein phylogenies that confidently resolve several inter- and intra-class relationships within the phylum Ciliophora. We leverage the massive sequencing efforts from the Marine Microbial Eukaryote Transcriptome Sequencing Project, other SRA submissions, and available genome data with our own sequencing efforts to determine the phylogenetic position of Mesodinium and to generate the most taxonomically rich phylogenomic ciliate tree to date. Regardless of the data mining strategy, the multiprotein data set, or the molecular models of evolution employed, we consistently recovered the same well-supported relationships among ciliate classes, confirming many of the higher-level relationships previously identified. Mesodinium always formed a monophyletic group with members of the Litostomatea, with mixotrophic species of Mesodinium—M. rubrum, M. major, and M. chamaeleon—being more closely related to each other than to the heterotrophic member, M. pulex. The well-supported position of Mesodinium as sister to other litostomes contrasts with previous molecular analyses including those from phylogenomic studies that exploited the same transcriptomic databases. These topological discrepancies illustrate the need for caution when mining mixed-species transcriptomes and indicate that identifying ciliate sequences among prey contamination—particularly for Mesodinium species where expression from stolen prey nuclei appears to dominate—requires thorough and iterative vetting with phylogenies that incorporate sequences from a large outgroup of prey.
    Description: We thank David Beaudoin and Holly V. Moeller for their assistance in collecting cells and extracting RNA. We thank the Josephine Bay Paul Center for Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution at the Marine Biological Laboratory for the generous use of their servers. This work was supported in part by a National Science Foundation grant to both authors (IOS 1354773).
    Keywords: Mesodinium ; Litostomatea ; ciliate phylogenomics ; mixed-species transcriptomes ; sequence contamination
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  • 25
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2020.
    Description: The shallow marine ecosystems of coral atolls and the human communities they support are among the most vulnerable to anthropogenic climate change. Sea-level rise threatens to inundate low-lying reef islands, tropical cyclone intensification threatens islands with flooding and erosion, and ocean warming and acidification threaten the health of coral reefs. Unfortunately, the sediment dynamics that shape the morphology of coral reefs and atoll reef islands are poorly understood, hindering predictions of coral atoll responses to climate change forcing. Here, I apply an eclectic set of methods, including numerical modeling, physical lab experiments, and sedimentological analysis, to produce insights into the ways tropical cyclones and waves move sediment on fringing reefs. First, I use a numerical model of hydrodynamics to predict the influence of sea-level rise and wave climate change on sediment transport across a coral atoll fringing reef. I demonstrate that by the end of the century, sea-level rise will reduce sediment transport rates from the fore reef to the beach, but increase transport rates from the reef flat to the beach. Wave climate change will have relatively negligible influence on cross-reef sediment transport. Additionally, I use the weathering of foraminifera tests to produce a sediment proxy of transport duration and direction across atoll reef flats, but demonstrate that the proxy does not clearly identify storm deposits. Second, I execute a series of experiments in an oscillating flow tunnel to constrain the rate at which sediment erodes reef surfaces under waves. I find that the erosion rate increases as a power law of wave orbital velocity, and that amount of sediment has a second-order influence. Finally, I establish grain size in a sediment core retrieved from a blue hole in the Marshall Islands as a proxy for tropical cyclone genesis and, using the results from an ensemble of climate models, demonstrate that enhanced tropical cyclogenesis during the Little Ice Age may have been driven by an anomalously negative Pacific Meridional Mode. This thesis demonstrates the importance of sediment dynamics on the morphology of fringing reefs and atoll reef islands and the sensitivity of those dynamics to centennial climate variability.
    Description: Funding for this project was provided by the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP RC-2336).
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  • 26
    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Xu, X., Li, G., Li, C., Zhang, J., Wang, Q., Simmons, D. K., Chen, X., Wijesena, N., Zhu, W., Wang, Z., Wang, Z., Ju, B., Ci, W., Lu, X., Yu, D., Wang, Q., Aluru, N., Oliveri, P., Zhang, Y. E., Martindale, M. Q., & Liu, J. Evolutionary transition between invertebrates and vertebrates via methylation reprogramming in embryogenesis. National Science Review, 6(5), (2019):993-1003, doi:10.1093/nsr/nwz064.
    Description: Major evolutionary transitions are enigmas, and the most notable enigma is between invertebrates and vertebrates, with numerous spectacular innovations. To search for the molecular connections involved, we asked whether global epigenetic changes may offer a clue by surveying the inheritance and reprogramming of parental DNA methylation across metazoans. We focused on gametes and early embryos, where the methylomes are known to evolve divergently between fish and mammals. Here, we find that methylome reprogramming during embryogenesis occurs neither in pre-bilaterians such as cnidarians nor in protostomes such as insects, but clearly presents in deuterostomes such as echinoderms and invertebrate chordates, and then becomes more evident in vertebrates. Functional association analysis suggests that DNA methylation reprogramming is associated with development, reproduction and adaptive immunity for vertebrates, but not for invertebrates. Interestingly, the single HOX cluster of invertebrates maintains unmethylated status in all stages examined. In contrast, the multiple HOX clusters show dramatic dynamics of DNA methylation during vertebrate embryogenesis. Notably, the methylation dynamics of HOX clusters are associated with their spatiotemporal expression in mammals. Our study reveals that DNA methylation reprogramming has evolved dramatically during animal evolution, especially after the evolutionary transitions from invertebrates to vertebrates, and then to mammals.
    Description: This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFC1003303), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the CAS (XDB13040200), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (91519306, 31425015), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the CAS and the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, CAS (QYZDY-SSW-SMC016).
    Keywords: DNA methylation ; evolution ; development ; reprogramming
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  • 27
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    Unknown
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2020.
    Description: Advances in the miniaturization of microelectronics has greatly contributed to the proliferation of small, low cost autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). These affordable vehicles offer organizations a flexible platform that can be adapted to support a multitude of research goals. The small size and low entry cost come with a trade off of simple navigation systems, typically dead reckoning (DR) using a speed determined via propeller counts and heading from a low cost micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) inertial measurement unit (IMU), whose error grows unbounded without the availability of a ground referenced fix source and is compounded by the bias present in the speed measurement due to the change in hydrodynamics from the addition of sensors to the hull form. Additionally, some capabilities such as water current velocity measurement traditionally requires the addition of equipment that is not only expensive, but also whose size and power consumption can adversely affect operating characteristics and deployment times. This thesis expands on previous research using one-way travel time inverted USBL (OWTT-iUSBL) to calculate the local current velocity without the addition of a Doppler velocity log (DVL) or acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP). A novel extended Kalman filter (EKF) is proposed that, in addition to calculating the current velocity, estimates and corrects for the bias present in the speed measurement as determined by the main vehicle computer. Using data collected on the Charles River at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sailing Pavilion, it is shown that current velocities can be reasonably calculated using OWTT-iUSBL data as compared to the values calculated using long baseline (LBL) data.
    Description: Funding for this thesis research was provided the US Navy Civilian Institutions Office through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program.
    Keywords: EKF ; low-cost ; AUV
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  • 28
    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: © The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Vallecillo-Viejo, I. C., Liscovitch-Brauer, N., Diaz Quiroz, J. F., Montiel-Gonzalez, Maria F., Nemes, Sonya E., Rangan, K. J., Levinson, S. R., Eisenberg, E., & Rosenthal, J. J. C. Spatially regulated editing of genetic information within a neuron. Nucleic Acids Research, (2020): gkaa172, doi: 10.1093/nar/gkaa172.
    Description: In eukaryotic cells, with the exception of the specialized genomes of mitochondria and plastids, all genetic information is sequestered within the nucleus. This arrangement imposes constraints on how the information can be tailored for different cellular regions, particularly in cells with complex morphologies like neurons. Although messenger RNAs (mRNAs), and the proteins that they encode, can be differentially sorted between cellular regions, the information itself does not change. RNA editing by adenosine deamination can alter the genome’s blueprint by recoding mRNAs; however, this process too is thought to be restricted to the nucleus. In this work, we show that ADAR2 (adenosine deaminase that acts on RNA), an RNA editing enzyme, is expressed outside of the nucleus in squid neurons. Furthermore, purified axoplasm exhibits adenosine-to-inosine activity and can specifically edit adenosines in a known substrate. Finally, a transcriptome-wide analysis of RNA editing reveals that tens of thousands of editing sites (〉70% of all sites) are edited more extensively in the squid giant axon than in its cell bodies. These results indicate that within a neuron RNA editing can recode genetic information in a region-specific manner.
    Description: National Science Foundation (NSF) [IOS1557748 to J.R.]; United States–Israel Binational Science Foundation [BSF2013094 to J.R. and E.E.]; The Grass Foundation grant in support of the Doryteuthis pealeii Genome Project, and a gift by Mr. Edward Owens. Funding for open access charge: United States–Israel Binational Science Foundation [BSF2013094].
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  • 29
    Publication Date: 2022-10-27
    Description: © The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in da Fonseca, R. R., Couto, A., Machado, A. M., Brejova, B., Albertin, C. B., Silva, F., Gardner, P., Baril, T., Hayward, A., Campos, A., Ribeiro, A. M., Barrio-Hernandez, I., Hoving, H. J., Tafur-Jimenez, R., Chu, C., Frazao, B., Petersen, B., Penaloza, F., Musacchia, F., Alexander, G. C., Osorio, H., Winkelmann, I., Simakov, O., Rasmussen, S., Rahman, M. Z., Pisani, D., Vinther, J., Jarvis, E., Zhang, G., Strugnell, J. M., Castro, L. F. C., Fedrigo, O., Patricio, M., Li, Q., Rocha, S., Antunes, A., Wu, Y., Ma, B., Sanges, R., Vinar, T., Blagoev, B., Sicheritz-Ponten, T., Nielsen, R., & Gilbert, M. T. P. A draft genome sequence of the elusive giant squid, Architeuthis dux. Gigascience, 9(1), (2020): giz152. doi: 10.1093/gigascience/giz152.
    Description: Background: The giant squid (Architeuthis dux; Steenstrup, 1857) is an enigmatic giant mollusc with a circumglobal distribution in the deep ocean, except in the high Arctic and Antarctic waters. The elusiveness of the species makes it difficult to study. Thus, having a genome assembled for this deep-sea–dwelling species will allow several pending evolutionary questions to be unlocked. Findings: We present a draft genome assembly that includes 200 Gb of Illumina reads, 4 Gb of Moleculo synthetic long reads, and 108 Gb of Chicago libraries, with a final size matching the estimated genome size of 2.7 Gb, and a scaffold N50 of 4.8 Mb. We also present an alternative assembly including 27 Gb raw reads generated using the Pacific Biosciences platform. In addition, we sequenced the proteome of the same individual and RNA from 3 different tissue types from 3 other species of squid (Onychoteuthis banksii, Dosidicus gigas, and Sthenoteuthis oualaniensis) to assist genome annotation. We annotated 33,406 protein-coding genes supported by evidence, and the genome completeness estimated by BUSCO reached 92%. Repetitive regions cover 49.17% of the genome. Conclusions: This annotated draft genome of A. dux provides a critical resource to investigate the unique traits of this species, including its gigantism and key adaptations to deep-sea environments.
    Description: R.R.F. thanks the Villum Fonden for grant VKR023446 (Villum Fonden Young Investigator Grant), the Portuguese Science Foundation (FCT) for grant PTDC/MAR/115347/2009; COMPETE-FCOMP-01-012; FEDER-015453, Marie Curie Actions (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IEF, Proposal 272927), and the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF96) for its funding of the Center for Macroecology, Evolution, and Climate. H.O. thanks the Rede Nacional de Espectrometria de Massa, ROTEIRO/0028/2013, ref. LISBOA-01-0145-FEDER-022125, supported by COMPETE and North Portugal Regional Operational Programme (Norte2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). A.C. thanks FCT for project UID/Multi/04423/2019. M.P. acknowledges the support from the Wellcome Trust (grant number WT108749/Z/15/Z) and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory. M.P.T.G. thanks the Danish National Research Foundation for its funding of the Center for GeoGenetics (grant DNRF94) and Lundbeck Foundation for grant R52–5062 on Pathogen Palaeogenomics. S.R. was supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation grant NNF14CC0001. A.H. is supported by a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council David Phillips Fellowship (fellowship reference: BB/N020146/1). T.B. is supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council-funded South West Biosciences Doctoral Training Partnership (training grant reference BB/M009122/1). This work was partially funded by the Lundbeck Foundation (R52-A4895 to B.B.). H.J.T.H. was supported by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (#825.09.016), and currently by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) under grant HO 5569/2-1 (Emmy Noether Junior Research Group). T.V. and B. Brejova were supported by grants from the Slovak grant agency VEGA (1/0684/16, 1/0458/18). F.S. was supported by a PhD grant (SFRH/BD/126560/2016) from FCT. A.A. was partly supported by the FCT project PTDC/CTA-AMB/31774/2017. C.C. and Y.W. are partly supported by grant IIS-1526415 from the US National Science Foundation. Computation for the work described in this article was partially supported by the DeiC National Life Science Supercomputer at DTU.
    Keywords: Cephalopod ; Invertebrate ; Genome assembly
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  • 30
    Publication Date: 2022-10-27
    Description: © The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Tassia, M. G., David, K. T., Townsend, J. P., & Halanych, K. M. TIAMMAt: leveraging biodiversity to revise protein domain models, evidence from innate immunity. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 38(12), (2021): 5806–5818, https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msab258.
    Description: Sequence annotation is fundamental for studying the evolution of protein families, particularly when working with nonmodel species. Given the rapid, ever-increasing number of species receiving high-quality genome sequencing, accurate domain modeling that is representative of species diversity is crucial for understanding protein family sequence evolution and their inferred function(s). Here, we describe a bioinformatic tool called Taxon-Informed Adjustment of Markov Model Attributes (TIAMMAt) which revises domain profile hidden Markov models (HMMs) by incorporating homologous domain sequences from underrepresented and nonmodel species. Using innate immunity pathways as a case study, we show that revising profile HMM parameters to directly account for variation in homologs among underrepresented species provides valuable insight into the evolution of protein families. Following adjustment by TIAMMAt, domain profile HMMs exhibit changes in their per-site amino acid state emission probabilities and insertion/deletion probabilities while maintaining the overall structure of the consensus sequence. Our results show that domain revision can heavily impact evolutionary interpretations for some families (i.e., NLR’s NACHT domain), whereas impact on other domains (e.g., rel homology domain and interferon regulatory factor domains) is minimal due to high levels of sequence conservation across the sampled phylogenetic depth (i.e., Metazoa). Importantly, TIAMMAt revises target domain models to reflect homologous sequence variation using the taxonomic distribution under consideration by the user. TIAMMAt’s flexibility to revise any subset of the Pfam database using a user-defined taxonomic pool will make it a valuable tool for future protein evolution studies, particularly when incorporating (or focusing) on nonmodel species.
    Description: This work was supported by The National Science Foundation (Grant No. IOS—1755377 to K.M.H., Rita Graze, and Elizabeth Hiltbold Schwartz), and K.T.D. was supported by The National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program.
    Keywords: Protein evolution ; Domain annotation ; Animal evolution ; Innate immunity
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  • 31
    Publication Date: 2022-10-27
    Description: © The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Shoshan, Y., Liscovitch-Brauer, N., Rosenthal, J. J. C., & Eisenberg, E. Adaptive proteome diversification by nonsynonymous A-to-I RNA editing in coleoid cephalopods. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 38(9), (2021): 3775–3788, https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msab154.
    Description: RNA editing by the ADAR enzymes converts selected adenosines into inosines, biological mimics for guanosines. By doing so, it alters protein-coding sequences, resulting in novel protein products that diversify the proteome beyond its genomic blueprint. Recoding is exceptionally abundant in the neural tissues of coleoid cephalopods (octopuses, squids, and cuttlefishes), with an over-representation of nonsynonymous edits suggesting positive selection. However, the extent to which proteome diversification by recoding provides an adaptive advantage is not known. It was recently suggested that the role of evolutionarily conserved edits is to compensate for harmful genomic substitutions, and that there is no added value in having an editable codon as compared with a restoration of the preferred genomic allele. Here, we show that this hypothesis fails to explain the evolutionary dynamics of recoding sites in coleoids. Instead, our results indicate that a large fraction of the shared, strongly recoded, sites in coleoids have been selected for proteome diversification, meaning that the fitness of an editable A is higher than an uneditable A or a genomically encoded G.
    Description: This research was supported by a grants from the United States–Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), Jerusalem, Israel (BSF2017262 to J.J.C.R. and E.E.), the Israel Science Foundation (3371/20 to E.E.) and the National Science Foundation (IOS 1827509 and 1557748 to J.J.C.R).
    Keywords: RNA editing ; Adaptation ; Evolution
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  • 32
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-26
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2021.
    Description: This thesis explores the volatile content of the mantle, subducted oceanic crust, and arc magmas as well as the structure of slow spreading ocean crust and the heterogeneity of Earth’s upper mantle. In Chapter 2, I directly explore the halogen (F and Cl) content of mantle minerals in situ, then use these measurements to assess the halogen content of the upper mantle. In Chapter 3, I investigate the volatile content of Raspas eclogites (SW Ecuador), a proxy for deeply subducted oceanic crust, to evaluate volatile transfer from crustal generation at divergent plate boundaries (e.g., mid-ocean ridges) to recycling of ocean crust at subduction zones. In Chapter 4, I use the H2O content of nominally anhydrous minerals in plutonic arc cumulates to elucidate the H2O content of the melts from which the rocks crystallized. In this way, I assert that primitive arc magmas may contain 4–10 wt.% H2O and through fractional crystallization up to ~20 wt.% H2O, making them far more hydrous than traditional methods (i.e., olivine-hosted melt inclusions) surmise. In Chapter 5, I show that mantle peridotite exposed along the 16ºN region of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge originated in an arc setting and has been remixed into subridge mantle, indicating that the sub-ridge mantle is more heterogeneous and depleted than inferences made from mid-ocean ridge basalts suggest. Chapter 6 surveys the life cycle of oceanic core complexes through zircon geochronology and posits an updated framework for understanding the termination of oceanic core complexes, and more broadly oceanic detachment faults. Together, this contribution highlights the chemical heterogeneity of the mantle, and quantifies the full extent of volatiles hosted by mantle and crustal reservoirs.
    Description: The Stanley Watson Fellowship (WHOI) provided financial support during my first year of graduate school. The Academic Programs Office Ocean Venture Fund (WHOI) provided seed funding which initiated Chapters 3 and 4, and ultimately led to two funded NSF proposals. These resources are vital to JP students, and I am incredibly grateful for them. Primary support was provided by the National Science Foundation grants to Veronique Le Roux (EAR P&G #1524311, #1839128, #1855302) and Henry Dick (MG&G #1637130, #1657983).
    Keywords: Geochemistry of the crust and mantle ; Volatile elements ; Tectonics
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  • 33
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-19
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2020.
    Description: This thesis presents an Autonomous Underwater Glider (AUG) architecture that is intended for basin-scale unattended survey of Arctic sea-ice. The distinguishing challenge for AUG operations in the Arctic environment is the presence of year-round sea-ice cover which prevents vehicle surfacing for localization updates and shore-side communication. Due to the high cost of operating support vessels in the Arctic, the proposed AUG architecture minimizes external infrastructure requirements to brief and infrequent satellite updates on the order of once per day. This is possible by employing onboard acoustic sensing for sea-ice observation and navigation, along with intelligent management of onboard resources. To enable unattended survey of Arctic sea-ice with an AUG, this thesis proposes a hierarchical acoustics-based sea-ice characterization scheme to perform science data collection and assess environment risk, a multi-factor terrain-aided navigation method that leverages bathymetric features and active ocean current sensing to limit localization error, and a set of energy-optimal propulsive and hotel policies that react to evolving environmental conditions to improve AUG endurance. These methods are evaluated with respect to laboratory experiments and preliminary field data, and future Arctic sea-ice survey mission concepts are discussed.
    Description: Support for this research was provided through the National Science Foundation Navigating the New Arctic Grant #1839063 and the NASA PSTAR Grant #NNX16AL08G. Additionally, this research was supported by the Walter A. Rosenblith Presidential Fellowship.
    Keywords: Autonomous Underwater Glider (AUG) ; Sea-ice ; Energy efficient
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  • 34
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-19
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Oceanography/Applied Ocean Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2020.
    Description: Underwater Vehicles generally have control fins located only near their aft end, for making controllable changes in directions. This design allows for stability of control; but, the turns are typically large in comparison to the vehicle’s body length. Some bony fish, such as tuna, however, have deployable fins located towards the front of their body, in addition to their other fins. Their deployable fins allow them to modulate their hydrodynamic behavior in response to their environment. Tunas keep these fins retracted during steady cruising, and then deploy them during rapid maneuvers. However, the details of these hydrodynamic effects are not well understood. To investigate this phenomena, using a REMUS 100 as a model, a pair of vertical fins was added at different hull positions, to investigate the effects of fin location on the horizontal plane hydrodynamics, through: stability parameters, nonlinear simulation, and towing tank experiments. Depending on the added fin location, the vehicle stability changed, thereby affecting the maneuverability. As fins were placed forward on the vehicle, maneuverability increased, with effects tapering off at 0.2 BL ahead of the vehicle's center of buoyancy. This investigation explored how rigid underwater vehicles could benefit from added fins, without drastically changing the design of current vehicles.
    Keywords: Maneuverability ; UUVs ; Bioinspiration
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  • 35
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-19
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Oceanographic Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2020.
    Description: Sea ice thickness has long been an under-measured quantity, even in the satellite era. The snow surface elevation, which is far easier to measure, cannot be directly converted into sea ice thickness estimates without knowledge or assumption of what proportion of the snow surface consists of snow and ice. We do not fully understand how snow is distributed upon sea ice, in particular around areas with surface deformation. Here, we show that deep learning methods can be used to directly predict snow depth, as well as sea ice thickness, from measurements of surface topography obtained from laser altimetry. We also show that snow surfaces can be texturally distinguished, and that texturally-similar segments have similar snow depths. This can be used to predict snow depth at both local (sub-kilometer) and satellite (25 km) scales with much lower error and bias, and with greater ability to distinguish inter-annual and regional variability than current methods using linear regressions. We find that sea ice thickness can be estimated to ∼20% error at the kilometer scale. The success of deep learning methods to predict snow depth and sea ice thickness suggests that such methods may be also applied to temporally/spatially larger datasets like ICESat-2.
    Description: This research was funded by National Aeronautics and Space Administration grant numbers NNX15AC69G and 80NSSC20K0972, the US National Science Foundation grant numbers ANT-1341513, ANT-1341606, ANT-1142075 and ANT-1341717, and the WHOI Academic Programs Office.
    Keywords: Sea ice ; Antarctic ; Snow depth
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  • 36
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2021.
    Description: Oceanic fronts at the mesoscale and submesoscale are associated with enhanced vertical motion, which strengthens their role in global biogeochemical cycling as hotspots of primary production and subduction of carbon from the surface to the interior. Using process study models, theory, and field observations of biogeochemical tracers, this thesis improves understanding of submesoscale vertical tracer fluxes and their influence on carbon cycling. Unlike buoyancy, vertical transport of biogeochemical tracers can occur both due to the movement of isopycnals and due to motion along sloping isopycnals. We decompose the vertical velocity below the mixed layer into two components in a Lagrangian frame: vertical velocity along sloping isopycnal surfaces and the adiabatic vertical velocity of isopycnal surfaces and demonstrate that vertical motion along isopycnal surfaces is particularly important at submesoscales (1-10 km). The vertical flux of nutrient, and consequently the new production of phytoplankton depends not just on the vertical velocity but on the relative time scales of vertical transport and nutrient uptake. Vertical nutrient flux is maximum when the biological timescale of phytoplankton growth matches the vertical velocity frequency. Export of organic matter from the surface and the interior requires water parcels to cross the mixed layer base. Using Lagrangian analysis, we study the dynamics of this process and demonstrate that geostrophic and ageostrophic frontogenesis drive subduction along density surfaces across the mixed layer base. Along-front variability is an important factor in subduction. Both the physical and biological modeling studies described above are used to interpret observations from three research cruises in the Western Mediterranean. We sample intrusions of high chlorophyll and particulate organic carbon below the euphotic zone that are advected downward by 100 meters on timescales of days to weeks. We characterize the community composition in these subsurface intrusions at a lateral resolution of 1–10 km. We observe systematic changes in community composition due to the changing light environment and differential decay of the phytoplankton communities in low-light environments, along with mixing. We conclude that advective fluxes could make a contribution to carbon export in subtropical gyres that is equal to the sinking flux.
    Description: The work in this dissertation was funded by a NDSEG fellowship, Martin Fellowship, Grassle fellowship, Montrym grant, WHOI Academic Programs Office, and Office of Naval Research CALYPSO DRI grant N00014-16-1-3130.
    Keywords: Vertical velocity ; Submesoscale dynamics ; Biophysical interactions
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  • 37
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2021.
    Description: Operations in the Arctic Ocean are increasingly important due to the changing environment and the resulting global implications. These changes range from the availability of new global trade routes, accessibility of newly available resources in the area, and national security interests of the United States in the region. It’s necessary to build a greater understanding of the undersea environment and how it’s changing since these environmental changes have a direct impact on adjusting future operations in the region and looming global changes as less Arctic ice is present. The recent presence of the Beaufort Lens is changing the acoustic propagation paths throughout the Arctic region. Here a network of buoys were employed to communicate with an Autonomous Undersea Vehicle (AUV) while it operated under the ice throughout the Beaufort Lens with the goal of achieving near GPS quality navigation. The acoustic communications paths were compared using a vertical array throughout the Beaufort Lens. This beam forming was compared to the prediction from BELLHOP. As well, since acoustic communications are affected by multi-path, attenuation and interference from other sources it was interesting to note that bottom bounce was sometimes a reliable acoustic path.
    Keywords: Arctic ; Beaufort Lens ; Acoustic communications
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  • 38
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2021.
    Description: Chromium (Cr) isotopes have shown great potential as a paleo-redox proxy to trace the redox conditions of ancient oceans and atmosphere. However, its cycling in modern environments is poorly constrained. In my thesis, I attempt to fill in the gap of our understanding of chromium cycling in the modern ocean, with a focus on the redox processes in global oxygen deficient zones (ODZs). Firstly, we developed a method to analyze Cr isotopes of different Cr redox species. Tests on processing conditions demonstrated its robustness in obtaining accurate Cr isotope data. It is applicable to both frozen and fresh samples. This method allows us to investigate the redox cycling of Cr that is hard to unravel by existing total Cr methods. Secondly, in the Eastern Tropical North Pacific (ETNP), Eastern Tropical South Pacific (ETSP) and Arabian Sea ODZs, their total dissolved Cr profiles show preferential reduction of isotopically light Cr(VI) to Cr(III), which is scavenged and exported to deeper oceans. Applying our new method to ETNP and ETSP ODZ seawater samples, we observed Cr(VI) reduction in both ODZs with a similar fractionation factor. This indicates similar mechanisms may be controlling Cr(VI) reduction in the two ODZs. Cr(III) maximum coincides with Fe(II) and secondary nitrite maximums in the upper core of both ODZs. Shipboard incubations with spiked Fe(II) showed fast Cr(VI) reduction occurring in the ETNP ODZ. But neither Fe(II) nor microbes were reducing Cr(VI) directly. Thirdly, we calculated the isotope effects of Cr scavenging in the ETNP and ETSP ODZs. Thetwo ODZs show a similar isotope partitioning during Cr scavenging. And spatial variability is observed in the ETNP ODZ. Our calculated scavenged Cr isotope ratio is lighter than that of the total dissolved Cr from the same depth. It is also comparable to that of reducing or anoxic sediments, which implies that Cr isotopes can be used as an archive for local redox conditions.
    Description: This research was supported by an anonymous MIT Fellowship, Praceis Presidential Fellowship, Frederick A. Middleton Fellowship, the US National Science Foundation (NSF Award No. OCE-1459287, OCE-1736996, OCE-1924050 and DEB-1542240) and the Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education (C-MORE, NSF-OIA Award No. EF-0424599).
    Keywords: Chromium isotopes ; Oxygen deficient zones ; Redox cycling
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 39
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2022.
    Description: Detection, classification, localization, and tracking (DCLT) of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) in the presence of shipping traffic is a critical task for passive acoustic harbor security systems. In general, vessels can be tracked by their unique acoustic signature due to machinery vibration and cavitation noise. However, cavitation noise of UUVs is considerably quieter than ships and boats, making detection significantly more challenging. In this thesis, I demonstrated that it is possible to passively track a UUV from its highfrequency motor noise using a stationary array in shallow-water experiments with passing boats. First, causes of high frequency tones were determined through direct measurements of two UUVs at a range of speeds. From this analysis, common and dominant features of noise were established: strong tones at the motor’s pulse-width modulated frequency and its harmonics. From the unique acoustic signature of the motor, I derived a high-precision, remote sensing method for estimating propeller rotation rate. In shallow-water UUV field experiments, I demonstrated that detecting a UUV from motor noise, in comparison to broadband noise from the vehicle, reduces false alarms from 45% to 8.4% for 90% true detections. Beamforming on the motor noise, in comparison to broadband noise, improved the bearing accuracy by a factor of 3.2×. Because the signal is also high-frequency, the Doppler effect on motor noise is observable and I demonstrate that range rate can be measured. Furthermore, measuring motor noise was a superior method to the “detection of envelope modulation on noise” algorithm for estimating the propeller rotation rate. Extrapolating multiple measurements from the motor signature is significant because Bearing-Doppler-RPM measurements outperform traditional bearing-Doppler target motion analysis. In the unscented Kalman filter implementation, the tracking solution accuracy for bearing, bearing rate, range, and range rate improved by a factor 2.2×, 15.8×, 3.1×, and 6.2× respectively. These findings are significant for improving UUV localization and tracking, and for informing the next-generation of quiet UUV propulsion systems.
    Keywords: Autonomy ; Passive sonar ; Tracking
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  • 40
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Chemical Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2022.
    Description: Radioactive isotopes act as nuclear clocks that are utilized to trace and measure rates of chemical, biological, physical, and geological oceanographic processes. This thesis seeks to utilize both artificial (e.g., released from anthropogenic sources) and natural radioisotopes as tracers within the Pacific Ocean basin. Artificial radioisotopes released as a result of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants accident have the potential to negatively impact human and environmental health. This study evaluates 137Cs, 90Sr, and 129I concentrations in seawater off the coast of Japan, reconciles the sources of contaminated waters, and assesses the application of 137Cs/90Sr, 129I/137Cs, and 129I/90Sr as oceanic tracers. The analysis of activity ratios suggests a variety of sources, including ongoing sporadic and independent releases of radiocontaminants. Though decreasing, concentrations remain elevated compared to preaccident levels. Future planned releases of stored water from the reactor site may affect the surrounding environment; and thus, continued efforts to understand the distribution and fate of these radionuclides are warranted. Naturally-occurring radioisotopes (e.g., the 238U-234Th series used in this thesis) can give insight into surface export and remineralization of particulate organic carbon (POC) and trace metals (TMs). POC and TMs play a vital role in regulating the biological carbon pump (BCP), which in turn helps to moderate atmospheric CO2 levels by transporting carbon to the deep ocean, where it can be sequestered on timescales of centuries to millennia. Through this thesis we utilize the 238U:234Th disequilibrium method throughout the GEOTRACES GP15 Pacific Meridional Transect in order o provide basin-scale estimates of POC export and remineralization. There is only limited, recent use of this method to constrain TM fluxes, and as such this study also seeks to further develop this method for use in understanding TM cycling through comparative flux studies in the North Pacific.
    Description: Funding sources for this thesis include the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Deerbrook Charitable Trust, NSF OCE award no. 1356630 and no. 1735445, and the NSF GRFP.
    Keywords: Radioactive tracers ; Carbon cycling ; Trace metal cycling
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  • 41
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Biological Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution May 2020.
    Description: Highly productive marine microbial communities in the coastal Southern Ocean sustain the broader Antarctic ecosystem and play a key role in Earth’s climate via the biological pump. Regional phytoplankton growth is primarily limited by iron and co-limited by cobalamin (vitamin B12), a trace cobalt-containing organometallic compound only synthesized by some bacteria and archaea. These micronutrients impact primary production and the microbial ecology of the two keystone phytoplankton types: diatoms and Phaeocystis antarctica. This thesis investigates microbe-driven cobalamin cycling in Antarctic seas across multiple spatiotemporal scales. I conducted laboratory culture experiments with complementary proteomics and transcriptomics to investigate the B12-ecophysiology of P. antarctica strain CCMP 1871 morphotypes under iron-B12 co-limitation. We observed colony formation under higher iron treatments, and a facultative use of B12-dependent (MetH) and B12-independent (MetE) methionine synthase isoforms in response to vitamin availability, demonstrating that this strain is not B12-auxotrophic. Through comparative ’omics, we identified a putative MetE protein in P. antarctica abundant under low B12, which is also found in other marine microbes. Across Antarctic seas, community-scale cobalt and B12 uptake rates were measured by 57Co radiotracer incubation experiments and integrated with hydrographic and phytoplankton pigment data. I observed significant correlations between uptake fluxes and environmental variables, providing evidence for predominantly diatom-driven uptake of these micronutrients in warmer, fresher surface waters with notable regional differences. To date, this work is the most comprehensive attempt to elucidate the processes governing the co-cycling of cobalt and B12 in any marine system. At the ecosystem-scale, I developed and tested a hypothesis of micronutrient-driven community dynamics through a trait-based model with cross-feeding interactions. The model demonstrates how the observed seasonal succession of springtime P. antarctica from solitary to colonial cells, bacterioplankton, and summertime diatoms may be explained by the microbial cycling of iron, dissolved organic carbon, and B12. Overall, this dissertation provides new information about the micronutrient-driven ecology of Antarctic marine microbes and adds to our understanding of the interconnections between organismal life cycle, trace metals, and trace organics in marine environments.
    Description: My training as a scientist during my time in the MIT–WHOI Joint Program (2014-2020) and the work presented in this dissertation were financially supported by the Academic Programs Office (APO) at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and various funding agencies. My first semester was supported by the WHOI Von Damm Fellowship (2014). Subsequent years and endeavors were supported by awards from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to Professor Michael Follows (Award 3778, M.J.F.) and Simons Collaboration on Computational Biogeochemical Modeling of Marine Ecosystems (Award 549931, M.J.F.); National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to Dr. Stephanie Dutkiewicz (Grant number 1434007, S.D.), and NSF Office of Polar Program (OPP) grant to Dr. Makoto Saito (M.S.) for the CICLOPS research expedition (OPP-1643684, OPP-1643845, and OPP-1644073).
    Keywords: Antarctica ; Cobalamin ; Microbes
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Biological Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2020.
    Description: Little is known about how Atlantic hurricane activity changes on long timescales. This thesis uses proxy development and proxy-model integration to constrain the spatiotemporal variability in hurricane activity in the Bahama Archipelago over the past millennium. I present annually-resolved archives of storm activity derived from sediment cores from blue holes on three islands in the Bahama Archipelago: South Andros, Long Island, and Middle Caicos. Dramatic differences between these records suggest localized controls on the hurricane patterns observed by each island. Thus, compiling these records together more accurately captures regional variations in hurricane strikes. Integrating our new Bahama Archipelago compilation with compiled paleohurricane records from the U.S. coastline indicates shifting patterns of hurricane activity over the past millennium between the Gulf Coast and the Bahama Archipelago/New England. Finally, I address whether variability in hurricane strikes observed in Bahamian paleohurricane records is related to climate or random variability using hurricane model output. The signal observed in any individual record of paleohurricane activity from the Bahama Archipelago is driven more by random variability in hurricane tracks than by climate. This thesis lays the groundwork for creating high-resolution paleohurricane records from blue holes and using hurricane models to inform our interpretations of these records.
    Description: This work was funded by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (to E.J.W.), National Science Foundation grant OCE-1356708 (to J.P.D. and P.J.vH.) and the Dalio Explore Foundation.
    Keywords: Paleohurricanes ; Carbonate sediment ; Blue holes
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  • 43
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2020.
    Description: Speleothems, or sedimentary rocks formed in caves, act as valuable archives of past climate change due to their suitability for U-series dating and high-resolution proxy analysis. These records can provide insights into water availability and controls on hydrology prior to the instrumental record. In this thesis, I present three records from newly-analyzed Mexican stalagmites using stable isotope (oxygen and carbon) and trace element to calcium (Mg/Ca and Sr/Ca) ratios as proxies for changing hydroclimate. Chapter 2 presents a precisely dated, mid-Holocene record of high rainfall and limited precipitation variability in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. Chapters 3 and 4 present novel climate records from northeastern Mexico, an understudied region of North America. Both records come from cave sites within the Mexican arid zone, which is simultaneously experiencing increased water scarcity and a rapidly growing population. In Chapter 3, I examine a speleothem from the first millennium of the Common Era, which showed that there is a precipitation dipole between northern and southern Mexico. Chapter 4 highlights, for the first time at decadal resolution, the northeast Mexican response to the 8.2 ka event and the Younger Dryas. These chapters show that the San Luis Potosí region is vulnerable to droughts under multiple climate mean states, and is subject to drying as Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation weakens due to anthropogenic climate change. The climate records detailed in this thesis improve our understanding of controls on Mexican hydroclimate and can serve as benchmarks for climate models.
    Description: This work was funded by US National Science Foundation (NSF) grants AGS-1702848 (M. Medina-Elizalde), AGS–1502877 (S. Burns), AGS-1804512 and AGS-1806090 (K. Johnson and D. McGee). I was also supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and the MIT School of Science Dean’s Fellowship. Fieldwork and analysis were funded by the WHOI Ocean Ventures Fund, the MIT EAPS Student Research Fund, and the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) Mexico program. Initial work for this project was also supported by UC MEXUS-CONACYT Collaborative Grant from the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC MEXUS CN-16-120). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
    Keywords: Stalagmite ; Drought ; Holocene
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  • 44
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Chemical Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution May 2022.
    Description: Marine diatoms are abundant photoautotrophic algae that contribute significantly to photosynthetic carbon fixation and export throughout the oceans. Zinc is an important micronutrient in algal metabolism, with scarce dissolved concentrations in the upper euphotic zone reflecting high biological demand. In this thesis, I investigated the response of marine diatoms to Zn scarcity to characterize metabolic mechanisms used to combat Zn stress. I began by assaying the ability to metabolically substitute cobalt (Co) in place of Zn in four diatom species and found that enhanced abilities to use Co are likely an adaptation to high surface dCo:dZn ratios in the native environment. I next demonstrated that Zn/Co metabolic substitution in diatoms is not universal using culture studies of Chaetoceros neogracile RS19, which has an absolute Zn requirement. Using global proteomic analysis, I then identified and characterized diatom ZCRP-A and ZCRP-B, a putative Zn-chaperone and membrane-tethered Zn acquisition protein, respectively, as two proteins involved in the low-Zn response. I demonstrated that these proteins are widespread in marine phytoplankton and can be deployed as protein biomarkers of Zn stress in the field. I furthermore documented both the detection of ZCRPs in the Southern Ocean and the existence of Zn/Fe co-limitation within the natural phytoplankton population in Terra Nova Bay, demonstrating that Zn co-limitation can indeed occur in the field, even in high macronutrient waters. Lastly, I explored the relative demand of Zn and cadmium (Cd) within the Southern Ocean community using stable 67Zn and 110Cd tracers, documenting a high demand for both metals during the austral 2017-2018 summer season and investigating the cycling of these elements within this important region. Overall, this dissertation provides new information regarding Zn acquisition and homeostasis mechanisms within marine algae and demonstrates that Zn co-limitation in the field is not only possible, but detectable via protein biomarkers.
    Description: I am very fortunate to have been financially supported over the course of my PhD by awards granted to the Saito Lab, specifically by National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant R01GM135709, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation grant 3782, and National Science Foundation (NSF) grants OCE-1657766, OCE-1658030, OCE-1736599, OCE-1850719, and OCE-1924554.
    Keywords: Zinc ; Diatoms ; Proteomic
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  • 45
    Publication Date: 2022-10-12
    Description: Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2022. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Oxford University Press for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Integrative & Comparative Biology 62(3), (2022): 805-816, https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icac108.
    Description: Skates are a diverse group of dorso-ventrally compressed cartilaginous fish found primarily in high-latitude seas. These slow-growing oviparous fish deposit their fertilized eggs into cases, which then rest on the seafloor. Developing skates remain in their cases for 1–4 years after they are deposited, meaning the abiotic characteristics of the deposition sites, such as current and substrate type, must interact with the capsule in a way to promote long residency. Egg cases are morphologically variable and can be identified to species. Both the gross morphology and the microstructures of the egg case interact with substrate to determine how well a case stays in place on a current-swept seafloor. Our study investigated the egg case hydrodynamics of eight North Pacific skate species to understand how their morphology affects their ability to stay in place. We used a flume to measure maximum current velocity, or “break-away velocity,” each egg case could withstand before being swept off the substrate and a tilt table to measure the coefficient of static friction between each case and the substrate. We also used the programing software R to calculate theoretical drag on the egg cases of each species. For all flume trials, we found the morphology of egg cases and their orientation to flow to be significantly correlated with break-away velocity. In certain species, the morphology of the egg case was correlated with flow rate required to dislodge a case from the substrate in addition to the drag experienced in both the theoretical and flume experiments. These results effectively measure how well the egg cases of different species remain stationary in a similar habitat. Parsing out attachment biases and discrepancies in flow regimes of egg cases allows us to identify where we are likely to find other elusive species nursery sites. These results will aid predictive models for locating new nursery habitats and protective policies for avoiding the destruction of these nursery sites.
    Description: This work was supported by the NSF-REU and FHL Blinks-Beacon for funding JNE. And the Stephen and Ruth Wainwright Endowed Fellowship, BEACON and Hoag Awards, Robert T. Paine Experimental and Field Ecology Award, FHL Award, FHL Marine Science Fund, FHL Student Fund (Kohn), Patricia L. Dudley Endowment for funding KCH.
    Description: 2023-07-04
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  • 46
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Chemical Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June 2021.
    Description: The existence of a marine phosphorus (P) redox cycle was recently confirmed when phosphonates, organophosphorus compounds with P in the (III) oxidation state, were found in high molecular weight dissolved organic matter. Although some features of the P redox cycle have come to light since the discovery of phosphonates, many aspects of phosphonate production, cycling and fate remain unknown. To address these gaps in our understanding, we studied phosphonate cycling in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, a chronically P-limited basin, using 33P and enzymatic assays. We showed that phosphonate production was low but consumption was high, suggesting that phosphonate production and consumption may be spatially or temporally decoupled. We also explored phosphonate production in the model marine cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus SB. Using 31P NMR, we found Prochlorococcus SB allocates ~50% of its cellular P to phosphonates. Allocation of P to phosphonates was conserved under P-limitation, and further investigation revealed phosphonates were associated with proteins. The discovery of phosphonoproteins in Prochlorococcus SB opens new perspectives on the biochemical function of phosphonates and their role in P-cycling. Finally, we developed a new P-targeted method to characterize marine organophosphorus compounds using liquid chromatography coupled to electrospray ionization and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry.
    Description: This work was supported by the Simons Foundation under grant numbers POP49476 and 721227 [D. Repeta], the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation under the grant number 6000 [D. Repeta] and the National Science Foundation OCE under the grant number 1634080 [D. Repeta].
    Keywords: Phosphorus ; Phosphonate ; Biogeochemical cycling
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2021.
    Description: This thesis focuses on interpreting geophysical and geochemical observables in terms of the thermomechanical state of the lithosphere. In Chapter 1, I correlate lower crustal rheology with seismic wave speed. Compositional variation is required to explain half of the total variability in predicted lower crustal stress, implying that constraining regional lithology is important for lower crustal geodynamics. In Chapter 2, I utilize thermobarometry, diffusion models, and thermodynamic modelling to constrain the ultra-high formation conditions and cooling rates of the Gore Mountain Garnet Amphibolite in order to understand the rheology of the lower crust during orogenic collapse. In Chapter 3, I interpret geophysical data along a 74 Myr transect in the Atlantic to the temporal variability and relationship of crustal thickness and normal faults. In Chapter 4, I constrain the error present in the forward-calculation of seismic wave speed from ultramafic bulk composition. I also present a database and toolbox to interpret seismic wave speeds in terms of temperature and composition. Finally, in Chapter 5 I apply the methodology from Chapter 4 to interpret a new seismic tomographic model in terms of temperature, density, and composition in order to show that the shallow lithospheric roots are density unstable.
    Description: Funding for this research was provided by an MIT Presidential Fellowship, MIT Student Research Funds, the National Science Foundation Division of Earth Sciences (EAR) and Ocean Sciences (OCE) grants EAR-16-24109, EAR-17-22932, EAR-17-22935, OCE-14-58201, and SCEC Awards 16106 and 17202., SCEC, Geological Society of America Graduate Student Research Fellowship, WHOI Ocean Venture Fund, and the WHOI Academic Programs Office.
    Keywords: Lithosphere ; Seismic wave speed ; Rheology
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 48
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2021.
    Description: Observations of hydrographic and dynamical properties on the Middle Atlantic Bight shelf document strong variability at time scales spanning events that last a few days to century long trends. This thesis studies individual processes which impact shelf temperature and velocity structure, and quantifies the mean velocity conditions at the shelf break. Chapter 2 uses model output to study the dynamics that lead to the breakdown of summertime thermal stratification, and how the processes which reduce stratification vary from year to year. In summer, the atmosphere heats the surface of the ocean, leading to strong thermal stratification with warm water overlying cool water. During fall, strong storm events with downwelling-favorable winds are found to be the primary process by which stratification is reduced. The timing of these events and the associated destratification varies from year to year. In Chapter 3, the velocity structure of the New Jersey shelf break is examine, with a focus on the Shelfbreak Jet. Using 25 years of velocity measurements, mean velocity sections of the Shelfbreak Jet are created in both Eulerian and stream coordinate frameworks. The jet exhibits strong seasonal variability, with maximum velocities observed in spring and minimum velocities in summer. Evidence is found that Warm Core Rings, originating from the Gulf Stream and passing through the Slope Sea adjacent to the New Jersey shelf, tend to shift the Shelfbreak Jet onshore of its mean position or entirely shutdown the Shelfbreak Jet’s flow. At interannual timescales, variability in the Shelfbreak Jet velocity is correlated with the temperature on the New Jersey Shelf, with temperature lagging by about 2 months. Chapter 4 focuses on the impact of Warm Core Rings on the velocity and temperature structure on the New Jersey shelf. Warm Core Rings that have higher azimuthal velocities and whose cores approach closer to the shelf are found to exert greater influence on the shelf’s along-shelf velocities, with the fastest and closest rings reversing the direction of flow at the shelf break. Warm Core Rings are also observed to exert long-lasting impacts on the shelf temperature, with faster rings cooling the shelf and slower rings warming the shelf. Seasonal changes in thermal stratification strongly affect how rings alter the shelf temperature. Rings in summer tend to cool the shelf, and rings throughout the rest of the year generally warm the shelf.
    Description: This research was funded under WHOI Academic Programs Endowed Funds, NSF #OCE-1634094, and NSF #OCE-1924041.
    Keywords: Temperature variability ; Velocity variability ; Middle Atlantic Bight
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  • 49
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2021.
    Description: Small pelagic fishes, also termed forage fishes, represent a critical link between secondary production and myriad top predators in marine ecosystems, including the Northeast US shelf. In this dissertation, I analyze the drivers of forage fish distribution throughout the Northeast US shelf and the drivers of the abundance of the ecologically important northern sand lance. Chapter 2 examines the basic ecology of northern sand lance and uses these insights to identify mechanistic drivers of their abundance. I then explore different scenarios of these drivers to project sand lance abundance through the end of the 21st century, which appears precarious for adult sand lance unless current trajectories change. Chapter 3 analyzes the environmental drivers of the distribution of the six dominant, offshore forage fish species (northern sand lance, Atlantic herring, alewife, blueback herring, Atlantic mackerel, and Atlantic butterfish) on the Northeast US shelf to elucidate the role of environmental covariates in shelf occupancy by these taxa. The results of this chapter indicate shelf occupancy of butterfish and Atlantic mackerel are increasing through time while occupancy of sand lance is decreasing with time. The occurrence of most of these species is also moving deeper and northward with time. Chapter 4 assesses the source-sink dynamics of three sand lance hotspots through Lagrangian particle tracking models simulating larval sand lance transport. Connectivity varies among these hotspots with Georges Bank and Stellwagen Bank having notable retention while the Great South Channel relies on larvae from other hotspots. Retention on Stellwagen Bank and Georges Bank are linked to strong wind events during the larval period of sand lance. Collectively, this dissertation improves our understanding of the dynamics driving variability in the Northeast US shelf forage fish complex, particularly for northern sand lance.
    Description: The research within this dissertation was funded by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (awarded to JJS), Woods Hole Sea Grant (NA18OAR4170104, Project No. R/O-57), the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (IA agreement M17PG0019), and the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation.
    Keywords: Forage fish ; Northwest Atlantic ; Fisheries oceanography
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2021.
    Description: An emerging paradigm posits that the abyssal overturning circulation is driven by bottom-enhanced mixing, which results in vigorous upwelling in the bottom boundary layer (BBL) along the sloping seafloor and downwelling in the stratified mixing layer (SML) above; their residual is the overturning circulation. This boundary-controlled circulation fundamentally alters abyssal tracer distributions, with implications for global climate. Chapter 1 describes how a basin-scale overturning circulation arises from the coupling between the ocean interior and mixing-driven boundary layers over rough topography, such as the sloping flanks of mid-ocean ridges. BBL upwelling is well predicted by boundary layer theory, whereas the compensation by SML downwelling is weakened by the upward increase of the basin-wide stratification, which supports a finite net overturning. These simulated watermass transformations are comparable to best-estimate diagnostics but are sustained by a crude parameterization of boundary layer restratification processes. In Chapter 2, I run a realistic simulation of a fracture zone canyon in the Brazil Basin to decipher the non-linear dynamics of abyssal mixing layers and their interactions with rough topography. Using a hierarchy of progressively idealized simulations, I identify three physical processes that set the stratification of abyssal mixing layers (in addition to the weak buoyancy-driven cross-slope circulation): submesoscale baroclinic eddies on the ridge flanks, enhanced up-canyon flow due to inhibition of the cross-canyon thermal wind, and homogenization of canyon troughs below the level of blocking sills. Combined, these processes maintain a sufficiently large near-boundary stratification for mixing to drive globally significant BBL upwelling. In Chapter 3, simulated Tracer Release Experiments illustrate how passive tracers are mixed, stirred, and advected in abyssal mixing layers. Exact diagnostics reveal that while a tracer’s diapycnal motion is directly proportional to the mean divergence of mixing rates, its diapycnal spreading depends on both the mean mixing rate and an additional non-linear stretching term. These simulations suggest that the theorized boundary-layer control on the abyssal circulation is falsifiable: downwelling in the SML has already been confirmed by the Brazil Basin Tracer Release Experiment, while an upcoming experiment in the Rockall Trough will confirm or deny the existence of upwelling in the BBL.
    Description: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. 174530. I also acknowledge funding support from National Science Foundation Awards OCE-1536515 and OCE-1736109. This work was partially supported by MIT’s Rosenblith Presidential Fellowship.
    Keywords: Abyss ; Circulation ; Mixing
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Biological Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2021.
    Description: Sound is utilized by marine animal taxa for many ecologically important functions, and these taxa are vulnerable to adverse effects of anthropogenic noise on hearing and behavior. However, little is known about marine invertebrates’ responses to anthropogenic noise, and the ambient environmental sounds (“soundscapes”) they detect and respond to. Most acoustic studies report sound pressure (detected by mammals and some fish), but few report particle motion, the back-and-forth vibratory component of sound detected by marine invertebrates. I investigated invertebrate use of and response to sounds in two facets: 1) behavioral responses of longfin squid, Doryteuthis pealeii to anthropogenic noise, and 2) particle motion of coral reef soundscapes in the U.S. Virgin Islands. In laboratory-based experiments I exposed D. pealeii to construction noise originally recorded from an offshore wind farm. I found significant increases in squids’ alarm responses and in failed prey capture attempts during noise. Conversely, noise exposure had no significant effects on reproductive behaviors of groups of D. pealeii, indicating high motivation of these squid to reproduce during this stressor. Collectively, these experiments revealed the importance of considering behavioral context in studies and regulatory decisions regarding invertebrates’ susceptibility to anthropogenic noise impacts. In studying coral reef soundscapes, I reported particle motion trends over several months for coral reefs varying in habitat quality, including coral cover and fish abundance. I found acoustic properties over which particle motion closely scaled with pressure, and others over which it did not. I compared soundscape data with particle motion hearing thresholds, and found that invertebrates may only detect high amplitude and low frequency transient sound cues on reefs, such as those produced by fishes. My research bring new insights on natural and anthropogenic sound cues detectable by marine invertebrates, and how and when invertebrates will be vulnerable to anthropogenic noise pollution.
    Description: My graduate work was funded in part by the US Department of Interior, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Environmental Studies Program through Interagency Agreement Number M17PG00029 with the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (funding to Aran Mooney and Jenni Stanley). My work was also supported by the NSF Biological Oceanography award OCE-1536782 (funding to Aran Mooney). I received tuition and stipend support from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program [Grant No. 2388357]. The Academic Program Office at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution provided tuition and stipend support as well as travel support. The MIT Student Assistance Fund, the Aquatic Noise 2019 Organizing Committee, and the Acoustical Society of America also provided travel support.
    Keywords: Cephalopod ; Renewable energy ; Ecoacoustics
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  • 52
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2021.
    Description: A novel performance metric to improve underwater digital acoustic communication, called Multipath Penalty (MPP), is proposed as an alternative to traditional signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) methods in the context of the Arctic Beaufort Sea. MPP and SNR are compared alongside a third performance metric, Minimum Achievable Error (MAE), which replicates the operation of a channel estimate-based decision feedback equalizer in an acoustic modem. The three metrics are then tested in a hardware-in-the-loop Virtual Ocean simulator for an autonomous undersea vehicle (AUV) communicating with a collaborator. Using field data of modem statistics obtained duringICEX20 and expanded data supplied by the simulator, calibration of the three metrics to modem packet success is evaluated, resulting in a proposed recalibration for MAE. The AUV’s ability to communicate when adaptively choosing its depth is analyzed above and below the Beaufort Lens, and settings for MPP’s engineering variables are obtained. The results show MPP generally improves reception and demodulation of acoustic transmissions over SNR by approximately 5% within an operational range of 8 km, while achieving similar results to the more robust metric MAE. MPP is an improved utility for underwater digital acoustic communication in both marine autonomy and as a tactical decision aid.
    Description: This work would not be possible without the extraordinary support of the United States Navy, which provided funding for this research, my degree, and my livelihood as an active duty submarine officer.
    Keywords: Multi-path Penalty ; Acoustics ; Metric
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  • 53
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2021.
    Description: There are many significant challenges for unmanned autonomous platforms at sea including predicting the likely scenarios for the ocean environment, quantifying regional uncertainties, and updating forecasts of the evolving dynamics using their observations. Due to the operational constraints such as onboard power, memory, bandwidth, and space limitations, efficient adaptive reduced order models (ROMs) are needed for onboard predictions. In the first part, several reduced order modeling schemes for regional ocean forecasting onboard autonomous platforms at sea are described, investigated, and evaluated. We find that Dynamic Mode Decomposition (DMD), a data-driven dimensionality reduction algorithm, can be used for accurate predictions for short periods in ocean environments. We evaluate DMD methods for ocean PE simulations by comparing and testing several schemes including domain splitting, adjusting training size, and utilizing 3D inputs. Three new approaches that combine uncertainty with DMD are also investigated and found to produce practical and accurate results, especially if we employ either an ensemble of DMD forecasts or the DMD of an ensemble of forecasts. We also demonstrate some results from projecting / compressing high-fidelity forecasts using schemes such as POD projection and K-SVD for sparse representation due to showing promise for distributing forecasts efficiently to remote vehicles. In the second part, we combine DMD methods with the GMM-DO filter to produce DMD forecasts with Bayesian data assimilation that can quickly and efficiently be computed onboard an autonomous platform. We compare the accuracy of our results to traditional DMD forecasts and DMD with Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) forecast results and show that in Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) sense as well as error field sense, that the DMD with GMM-DO errors are smaller and the errors grow slower in time than the other mentioned schemes. We also showcase the DMD of the ensemble method with GMM-DO. We conclude that due to its accurate and computationally efficient results, it could be readily applied onboard autonomous platforms. Overall, our contributions developed and integrated stochastic DMD forecasts and efficient Bayesian GMM-DO updates of the DMD state and parameters, learning from the limited gappy observation data sets.
    Description: I wish to thank the U.S. Navy’s Civilian Institution Program along with the MITWHOI Joint Program for providing the funding and resources that made this research and continuing my education possible.
    Keywords: Data assimilation ; Reduced order models ; Stochastic prediction
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2021.
    Description: The Beaufort Gyre region of the Arctic Ocean is strongly stratified at the base of the wintertime mixed layer, which impedes the vertical transport of heat, energy, and other tracers. Ice-Tethered Profiler observations during 2004-2018 were used to characterize and investigate the seasonal and interannual variability of the strength, depth, density, and thickness of this highly stratified layer at the base of the mixed layer. This includes investigating the remnant stratification maximum, which formed when the summer mixed layer shoaled. Seasonally, the stratification maximum was never in a steady state. It was largest in October (4.8 × 10−3 rad2/sec2) and decreased during all winter months (to 2.3 × 10−3rad2/sec2 in June), indicating that surface forcing and interior vertical mixing were never in equilibrium during the year. Interannually, the period from 2011-2018 had a higher stratification maximum than then the period from 2005-2010 regardless of the season. The remnant stratification maximum was consistently weaker than the winter stratification maximum from which it formed. The initial evolution of the remnant stratification maximum is used to estimate an effective vertical diffusivity of order 10−6m2/s. No significant geographic variability was found, in part due to high temporal and small scale variability of the stratification maximum layer. Implications for heat transport through to the sea ice cover are discussed.
    Keywords: Beaufort Gyre ; Stratification ; Remnant layer
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Thesis
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Biological Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2022.
    Description: Protists are taxonomically and metabolically diverse drivers of energy and nutrient flow in the marine environment, with recent research suggesting significant roles in global carbon cycling throughout the water column. Top-down controls on planktonic protists include grazing and parasitism, processes that both contribute to nutrient transfer and biogeochemical cycling in the global ocean. Recent global surveys of eukaryotic small subunit ribosomal RNA molecular signatures have highlighted the fact that parasites belonging to the marine alveolate order Syndiniales are both abundant and ubiquitous in coastal and open ocean environments, suggesting a major role for this taxon in marine food webs. Two coastal sites, Saanich Inlet (Vancouver Island, BC) and Salt Pond (Falmouth, MA, USA) were selected as model ecosystems to examine the impacts of Syndinian parasitism on protist communities. Data presented in this thesis combines high-resolution sampling, water chemistry (including nutrients) analyses, molecular marker gene analyses, fluorescence in situ hybridization, and modeling to address key knowledge gaps regarding syndinian ecology. Information is presented on previously undescribed putative host taxa, the prevalence of syndinian parasites and infections on different hosts in coastal waters, and a framework for modeling host-parasite interactions based on field observations.
    Description: Research was supported by the WHOI Ocean Venture Fund, the National Science Foundation Biological Oceanography OCE-1851012, and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. 1745302.
    Keywords: Syndiniales ; Parasitism ; Protist
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 56
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2022.
    Description: The ventilation of intermediate waters in the Labrador Sea has important implications for the strength of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Boundary current-interior interactions regulate the exchange of properties between the slope and the basin, which in turn regulates the magnitude of interior convection and the export of ventilated waters from the subpolar gyre. This thesis characterizes theWest Greenland Boundary Current System near Cape Farewell across a range of spatio-temporal scales. The boundary current system is composed of three velocity cores: (1) the West Greenland Coastal Current (WGCC), transporting Greenland and Arctic meltwaters on the shelf; (2) the West Greenland Current (WGC), which advects warm, saline Atlantic-origin water at depth, meltwaters at the surface, and newly-ventilated Labrador Sea Water (LSW); and (3) the Deep Western Boundary Current, which carries dense overflow waters ventilated in the Nordic Seas. The seasonal presence of the LSW and Atlantic-origin water are dictated by air-sea buoyancy forcing, while the seasonality of the WGCC is governed by remote wind forcing and the propagation of coastally trapped waves from East Greenland. Using mooring data and hydrographic surveys, we demonstrate mid-depth intensified cyclones generated at Denmark Strait are found offshore of the WGC and enhance the overflow water transport at synoptic timescales. Using mooring, hydrographic, and satellite data, we demonstrate that the WGC undergoes extensive meandering due to baroclinic instability that is enhanced in winter due to LSW formation adjacent to the current. This leads to the production of small-scale, anticyclonic eddies that can account for the entirety of wintertime heat loss within the Labrador Sea. The meanders are shown to trigger the formation of Irminger Rings downstream. Using mooring, hydrographic, atmospheric, and Lagrangian data, and a mixing model, we find that strong atmospheric storms known as forward tip jets cause upwelling at the shelfbreak that triggers offshore export of freshwater. This freshwater flux can explain the observed lack of ventilation in the eastern Labrador Sea. Together, this thesis documents previously unobserved interannual, seasonal, and synoptic-scale variability and dynamics within the West Greenland boundary current system that must be accounted for in future modeling.
    Description: The work in this dissertation was funded by the National Science Foundation grants OCE-1259618 and OCE-1756361.
    Keywords: Boundary current dynamics ; Labrador sea water formation ; Eddies
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  • 57
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Chemical Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2020.
    Description: Arctic marine and lacustrine systems are experiencing rapid warming due to climate change. These changes are especially important at the interface between sediments and surface waters because they are hotspots for biogeochemical transformations such as redox reactions, nutrient consumption and regeneration, organic matter leaching and degradation, and mineral weathering. Radium isotopes (223Ra, 224Ra, 226Ra, 228Ra) and radon-222, naturally occurring radioactive isotopes produced in sediments, are well-suited as tracers of nutrients, trace metals, and organic matter cycling processes at the sediment-water interface. In this thesis, I have applied radon-222 and the quartet of radium isotopes to study fundamental processes in subarctic lakes and on the Arctic continental shelf. First, radon-222 is used to quantify groundwater discharge into a shallow, tundra lake on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in Alaska in summer of 2017. Radon-derived groundwater fluxes were then paired with methane (CH4) measurements to determine delivery rates of methane into the lake via groundwater. Groundwater CH4 fluxes significantly exceeded diffusive air-water fluxes from the lake to the atmosphere, suggesting that groundwater is an important source of CH4 to Arctic lakes and may drive observed CH4 emissions. Higher CH4 emissions were observed compared to those reported previously in high latitude lakes, like due to higher CH4 concentrations in groundwater. These findings indicate that deltaic lakes across warmer permafrost regions may act as important hotspots for methane release across Arctic landscapes. Then, the quartet of radium isotopes is used to study the impacts of storms and sea ice formation as drivers of sediment-water interaction on the Alaskan Beaufort shelf. The timeseries presented in this study is among the first to document the combined physical and chemical signals of winter water formation in the Beaufort Sea, made possible by repeat occupations of the central Beaufort shelf. Radium measurements are combined with inorganic nitrogen and hydrographic measurements to elucidate the episodic behavior of winter water formation and its ability to drive exchange with bottom sediments during freeze-up.
    Description: Financial support for Chapter 2 was funded by National Science Foundation awards OCE-1458305 to M.A.C., 1561437 to S.M.N, J.D.S., and R.M.H and 1624927 to S.M.N., P.J.M. and R.M.H. The work completed for Chapter 3 was funded by the Montrym Fund at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Academic Programs Office at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the NSF Arctic GEOTRACES (OCE-1458305), Pacific GEOTRACES (OCE-1736277), and Arctic Observing Network programs (OPP-1733564).
    Keywords: Arctic ; Sediment ; Radionuclides
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 58
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2020.
    Description: Robotic swarms are increasingly complex above the waterline due to reliable communication links. However, the limited propagation of similar signals in the ocean has impacted advances in undersea robotics. Underwater vehicles often rely on acoustics for navigation solutions; however, this presents challenges for robotic swarms. Many localization methods rely on precision time synchronization or two-way communication to estimate ranges. The cost of Chip-scale Atomic Clocks (CSACs) and acoustic modems is limiting for large-scale swarms due to the cost-per-vehicle and communications structure. We propose a single vehicle with reliable navigation as a "leader" for a scalable swarm of lower-cost vehicles that receive signals via a single hydrophone. This thesis outlines range estimation methods for sources with known signal content, including frequency and power at its origin. Transmission loss is calculated based on sound absorption in seawater and geometric spreading loss to estimate range through the Signal Absorption-Based Range Estimator (SABRE). SABRE's objective is to address techniques that support low-cost undersea swarming. This thesis's contributions include a novel method for range estimation onboard underwater vehicles that supports relative navigation through Doppler-shift methods for target bearing. This thesis develops the theory, algorithms, and analytical tools for real-world data range estimation.
    Keywords: Absorption ; Single-hydrophone ; Swarm
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 59
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2020.
    Description: This thesis examines the transition of a vessel from the open ocean, where collisions are rare, to a high risk and heavy traffic area such as a Traffic Separation Scheme (TSS). Previous autonomy approaches generally view path planning and collision avoidance as two separate functions, i.e. a vessel will follow the planned path until conditions are met for collision avoidance algorithms to take over. Here an intermediate phase is proposed with the goal of adjusting the time of arrival to a high vessel density area so that the risk of collision is reduced. A general algorithm that calculates maximum future traffic density for all choices in the speed domain is proposed and implemented as a MOOS-IvP behavior. This behavior gives the vessel awareness of future collision risks and aids the collision avoidance process. This new approach improves the safety of the vessel by reducing the number of risky encounters that will likely require the vessel to maneuver for safety.
    Keywords: Collision avoidance ; MOOS-IvP ; COLREGs
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 60
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2021.
    Description: The early life stages of marine fishes play a critical role in population dynamics, largely due to their high abundance, high mortality, and ease of transport in ocean currents. This dissertation demonstrates the value of combining larval data, collected in the field and the laboratory, with model simulations. In Chapter 2, analyses of field observations of ontogenetic vertical distributions of coral reef fish revealed a diversity of behaviors both between and within families. In Caribbean-wide particle-tracking simulations of representative behaviors, surface-dwelling larvae were generally transported longer distances with greater population connectivity amongst habitat patches, while the evenly-distributed vertical behavior and downward ontogenetic vertical migration were similar to one another and led to greater retention near natal sites. However, hydrodynamics and habitat vailability created some local patterns that contradicted the overall expectation. Chapter 3 presents evidence of tuna spawning inside a large no-take marine protected area, the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA). Despite variation in temperature and chlorophyll, the larval tuna distributions were similar amongst years, with skipjack (Katsuwonus pelamis) and Thunnus spp. tunas observed in all three years. Backtracking simulations indicated that spawning occurred inside PIPA in all 3 study years, demonstrating that PIPA is protecting viable tuna spawning habitat. In Chapter 4, several lines of larval evidence support the classification of the Slope Sea as a major spawning ground for Atlantic bluefin tuna with conditions suitable for larval growth. The abundance of bluefin tuna larvae observed in the Slope Sea aligns with typical observations on the other two spawning grounds. Age and growth analyses of bluefin tuna larvae collected in the Slope Sea and the Gulf of Mexico in 2016 did not show a growth rate difference between regions, but did suggest that Slope Sea larvae are larger at the onset of exogenous feeding. Collected larvae were backtracked to locations north of Cape Hatteras and forward tracked to show that they would have been retained within the Slope Sea until the onset of swimming. As a whole, this thesis presents valuable contributions to the study of larval fishes and the attendant implications for marine resource management.
    Description: National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (to C.M.H.), the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Ocean Life Institute (Grant 22569.01 to J. Llopiz and C.M.H.), the Adelaide and Charles Link Foundation, the Phoenix Islands Protected Area Trust, the J. Seward Johnson Endowment in support of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's Marine Policy Center, and the WHOI Academic Programs Office.
    Keywords: Marine protected area ; Trait-based ; Biophysical model
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2021.
    Description: Subduction zones host the greatest earthquakes on earth and pose great threat to human society. The largest slip in megathrust earthquakes often occurs in the 10–50 km depth range, yet seismic imaging of the material properties in this region has proven difficult. This thesis focuses on developing methods to utilize high frequency (2–12 Hz) seismic waves scattered from the megathrust plate interface to constrain its fine-scale velocity structures and to investigate the relationship between velocity structures and megathrust slip behaviors. Chapter 2 investigates the locking condition of the subducted Gorda plate by simulating afterslip that would be expected as a result of the stress changes from offshore strike-slip earthquakes. Chapter 3 develops array analysis methods to identify P-to-S and S-to-P seismic converted phases that convert at the subducted Gorda plate interface from local earthquakes and uses them to constrain the geometry and material properties of the plate boundary fault of the subducted Gorda plate between 5–20 km depth. Chapters 4 and 5 use a dense nodal array and numerical modeling methods to study the seismic guided waves that propagate along the thin low velocity layer at the boundary of the subducted Gorda plate. Taken together, our results indicate that material properties of the subduction plateboundary fault is highly heterogeneous and the plate-boundary fault is potentially contained in a low velocity layer with significant porosity and fluid content at seismogenic depths.
    Description: Funding for this research was provided by National Science Foundation Division of Earth Sciences (EAR) award #1520690 and the WHOI Academic Programs Office.
    Keywords: Subduction zone ; Scattered seismic waves ; Plate boundary
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  • 62
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2021.
    Description: Anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are driving rapid changes in ocean conditions. Shallow-water coral reefs are experiencing the brunt of these changes, including intensifying marine heatwaves (MHWs) and rapid ocean acidification (OA). Consequently, coral reefs are in broad-scale decline, threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people. Ensuring survival of coral reefs in the 21st century will thus require a new management approach that incorporates robust understanding of reef-scale climate change, the mechanisms by which these changes impact corals, and their potential for adaptation. In this thesis, I extract information from within coral skeletons to 1) Quantify the climate changes occurring on coral reefs and the effects on coral growth, 2) Identify differences in the sensitivity of coral reefs to these changes, and 3) Evaluate the adaptation potential of the keystone reef-building coral, Porites. First, I develop a mechanistic Porites growth model and reveal the physicochemical link between OA and skeletal formation. I show that the thickening (densification) of coral skeletal framework is most vulnerable to OA and that, under 21st century climate model projections, OA will reduce Porites skeletal density globally, with greatest impact in the Coral Triangle. Second, I develop an improved metric of thermal stress, and use a skeletal bleaching proxy to quantify coral responses to intensifying heatwaves in the central equatorial Pacific (CEP) since 1982. My work reveals a long history of bleaching in the CEP, and reef-specific differences in thermal tolerance linked to past heatwave exposure implying that, over time, reef communities have adapted to tolerate their unique thermal regimes. Third, I refine the Sr-U paleo-thermometer to enable monthly-resolved sea surface temperatures (SST) generation using laser ablation ICPMS. I show that laser Sr-U accurately captures CEP SST, including the frequency and amplitude of MHWs. Finally, I apply laser Sr-U to reconstruct the past 100 years of SST at Jarvis Island in the CEP, and evaluate my proxy record of bleaching severity in this context. I determine that Porites coral populations on Jarvis Island have not yet adapted to the pace of anthropogenic climate change.
    Description: This research was supported by US National Science Foundation Awards OCE-1220529, ANT-1246387, OCE-1737311, CE-1601365, OCE-1805618, OCE-1537338, OCE-2016133, and from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution through the Ocean Life Institute, the Ocean Ventures Fund, the Grassle Fellowship Fund, and the MIT-WHOI Academic Programs Office. Additional funding was provided by the Taiwan MOST Grant 104-2628-M-001-007-MY3, the Robertson Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust in UK, the Atlantic Donor Advised Fund, The Prince Albert 2 of Monaco Foundation, the Akiko Shiraki Dynner Fund, the New England Aquarium, the Martin Family Society Fellowship for Sustainability, the Gates Millenium Scholarship, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation, the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program, and from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution through Investment in Science Fund, the Early Career Award, and the Access to the Sea Award.
    Keywords: Coral reef ; Climate ; Proxy
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 63
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Mechanical and Oceanographic Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2021.
    Description: The satellite ocean color remote sensing paradigm developed by government space agencies enables the assessment of ocean color products on global scales at kilometer resolutions. A similar paradigm has not yet been developed for regional scales at sub-meter resolutions, but it is essential for specific ocean color applications (e.g., mapping algal biomass in the marginal ice zone). While many aspects of the satellite ocean color remote sensing paradigm are applicable to sub-meter scales, steps within the paradigm must be adapted to the optical character of the ocean at these scales and the opto-electronics of the available sensing instruments. This dissertation adapts the three steps of the satellite ocean color remote sensing paradigm that benefit the most from reassessment at sub-meter scales, namely the correction for surface-reflected light, the design and selection of the opto-electronics and the post-processing of over-sampled regions. First, I identify which surface-reflected light removal algorithm and view angle combination are optimal at sub-meter scales, using data collected during a field deployment to the Martha’s Vineyard Coastal Observatory. I find that of the three most widely used glint correction algorithms, a spectral optimization based approach applied to measurements with a 40∘ view angle best recovers the remotesensing reflectance and chlorophyll concentration despite centimeter scale variability in the surface-reflected light. Second, I develop a simulation framework to assess the impact of higher optical and electronics noise on ocean color product retrieval from unique ocean color scenarios. I demonstrate the framework’s power as a design tool by identifying hardware limitations, and developing potential solutions, for estimating algal biomass from high dynamic range sensing in the marginal ice zone. Third, I investigate a spectral super-resolution technique for application to spatially over-sampled oceanic regions. I determine that this technique more accurately represents spectral frequencies beyond the Nyquist and that it can be trained to be invariant to noise sources characteristic of ocean color remote sensing on images with similar statistics as the training dataset. Overall, the developed and critically assessed sub-meter ocean color remote sensing paradigm enables researchers to collect high fidelity sub-meter data from imaging spectrometers in unique ocean color scenarios.
    Description: Ryan O’Shea was supported by the Department of Defense (DoD) through the National Defense Science & Engineering Graduate Fellowship (NDSEG) Program. This research was funded by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Edwin W. Hiam Ocean Science and Technology Award Fund, its Ocean Venture Funds, its Academic Programs Office, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration via grant number CCE NNX17AI72G to Dr. Samuel Laney. The raw data for Figures 3-3 and 3-4 were provided through Australian Antarctic Science grants 2678 and 4390.
    Keywords: Ocean color ; Hyperspectral ; Remote sensing
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 64
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Physical Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2021.
    Description: Estimating turbulence in the marine-atmospheric boundary layer is critical to many industrial, commercial and scientific fields, but of particular importance to the wind energy industry. Contributing to both the efficiency of energy extraction and the life-cycle cost of the turbine itself, turbulence in the atmospheric boundary layer is estimated within the wind energy industry as Turbulence Intensity (TI) and more recently by Turbulent Kinetic Energy (TKE). Traditional in-situ methods to measure turbulence are extremely difficult to deploy in the marine environment, resulting in a recent movement to and dependence on remote sensing methods. One type of remote sensing instrument, Doppler lidars, have shown to reliably estimate the wind speed and atmospheric turbulence while being cost effective and easily deployable, and hence are being increasingly utilized as a standard for wind energy assessments. In this thesis, the ability of lidars to measure turbulence up to a height of 200 m above mean sea level in the marine-atmospheric boundary layer was tested using a 7-month data set spanning winter to early summer. Lidar-based TI and TKE were estimated by three methods using observations from a highly validated lidar system and compared under both convective and stable atmospheric stability conditions. Convective periods were found to have higher turbulence at all the heights compared to stable conditions, while mean wind speed and shear were higher during stable conditions. The study period was characterized by generally low turbulent conditions with high turbulence events occurring at timescales of a few days. Mean vertical profiles of TKE were non-uniformly distributed in height during low turbulent conditions. During highly turbulent events, TKE increased more strongly with height. The definition of TI– following the industry or meteorology conventions – had no real effect on the results, and differences between cup or sonic anemometers and lidar TI values were small except at low wind speeds. All the three lidar-based TKE methods tested corresponded closely to independent estimates, and differences between the methods were small relative to the temporal variability of TKE observed at the offshore site.
    Keywords: Turbulence ; Wind engery ; Lidar
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 65
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Physical Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June 2021.
    Description: The apparent global increase in harmful algal blooms (HABs) includes Pseudo-nitzschia blooms in the Gulf of Maine, where shellfishery closures can cost millions of dollars. Temperatures in the gulf are warming, which can affect the severity of some HABs. Yet Pseudo-nitzschia in the region are understudied. Pseudo-nitzschia bloom dynamics, P. australis introduction, and potential future changes thereof were investigated in the Gulf of Maine. Data from ship surveys and moorings were used, as well as hydrodynamic, climate, and Lagrangian particle tracking models. Pseudonitzschia bloom toxicity was driven primarily by species composition, not environmental factors. P. australis was introduced to the region in 2016 via a coastal current from the Scotian Shelf. Climate change might intensify Pseudo-nitzschia blooms, shift bloom timing 1–2 weeks earlier in the spring or 4–6 weeks later in the fall, or lengthen the growing season by 3 weeks. It might also affect species composition and connectivity within the gulf. This work has implications for the monitoring of current and future blooms in the Gulf of Maine and for our understanding of HAB introduction to the region. It can also be used to develop predictive models for Pseudo-nitzschia, which could be applied to other HABs.
    Description: This research was funded by the National Science Foundation (Grants OCE-1314642 and OCE-1840381), the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (Grants 1P01ES021923-01 and P01 ES028938-01), the Woods Hole Center for Oceans and Human Health, WHOI Academic Programs Funds, the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s HAB Event Response Program (2012 and 2016).
    Keywords: Harmful algal blooms ; Modeling ; Gulf of Maine
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  • 66
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June 2021.
    Description: The Arctic Ocean is a vital component of Earth’s climate system experiencing dramatic environmental changes. The changes are reflected in its underwater ambient soundscape as its origin and propagation are primarily dependent on properties of the ice cover and water column. The first component of this work examines the effect on ambient noise characteristics due to changes to the Beaufort Sea sound speed profile (SSP) and ice cover. Specifically, the emergence of a warm water intrusion near 70 m depth has altered the historical Arctic SSP while the ice cover has become thinner and younger due to the rise in average global temperature. Hypothesized shifts to the ambient soundscape and surface noise generation due to these changes are verified by comparing the measured noise data during two experiments to modeled results. These changes include a broadside notch in noise vertical directionality as well as a shift from uniform surface noise generation to discrete generation at specific ranges. Motivated by our data analyses, the second component presents several tools to facilitate ambient noise characterization and generation monitoring. One is a convolutional neural network (CNN) approach to noise range estimation. Its robustness to SSP and bottom depth mismatch is compared with conventional matched field processing. We further explore how the CNN approach achieves its performance by examining its intermediate outputs. Another tool is a frequency domain, transient event detection algorithm that leverages image processing and hierarchical clustering to identify and categorize noise transients in data spectrograms. The spectral content retained by this method enables insight into the generation mechanism of the detected events by the ice cover. Lastly, we present the deployment of a seismo-acoustic system to localize transient events. Two forward approaches that utilize time-difference-ofarrival are described and compared with a more conventional, inverse technique. The examination of this system’s performance prompts recommendations for future deployments. With our ambient noise analysis and algorithm development, we hope these contributions provide a stronger foundation for continued study of the Arctic ambient soundscape as the region continues to grow in significance.
    Description: Office of Naval Research (ONR) via the University of California - San Diego (UCSD) under award number N00014-16-1-2129. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) via Applied Physical Sciences Corp. (APS) under award number HR0011-18-C-0008. Office of Naval Research (ONR) under award number N00014-17-1-2474. Office of Naval Research (ONR) under award number N00014-19-1-2741. National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant number 2389237.
    Keywords: Ambient noise ; Arctic change ; Noise analysis
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Oceanographic Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June 2021.
    Description: Nearly 1.5 million people inhabit barrier islands along the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf Coasts and coastal groundwater dynamics influence the availability of freshwater, ecosystem health, pollutant transport, and flooding in these densely populated communities. However, groundwater dynamics, including the aquifer head distribution and subsurface salinity structure, in coastal aquifers are affected by multiple environmental forcings, such as waves, tides, storm surges, and precipitation that act on a variety of spatial and temporal scales, making coastal groundwater dynamics complex and difficult to predict. Here, measurements of groundwater heads, salinities, and temperatures collected for 3 years across a 550-m-wide barrier island are used in conjunction with observations of ocean tides, surge, waves, sound level, and rainfall to characterize the dynamics of the surface aquifer. Infiltration from surge, tides, and waves during storms caused up to 2 m increases in the groundwater level under the dune. The head gradients owing to these storm-induced groundwater bulges suggest flows become inland directed on the ocean-side of the island during storms. An upper saline plume (20-30 PSU) was observed above fresher (10 PSU) water up to 30 m inland of the dune face, which was the maximum wave runup location. Differences in inland propagation between tidal- and storm-induced groundwater head fluctuations are explained using analytical theories for intermediate depth aquifers. Additionally, a separate analytical water-table evolution model driven with estimated ocean shoreline water levels (based on the 36-hr-averaged offshore tide, surge, and wave height) and measured precipitation is validated by citizen-science flood reports and predicts the maximum water-table height within 0.1 m of the observed levels across the barrier island.
    Description: Funding for this research was provided by the U.S. Coastal Research Program, the National Science Foundation, a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, the Woods Hole Oceanographic ISP program, and National Security Science & Engineering and Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowships.
    Keywords: Groundwater ; Storms ; Coastal aquifer
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2021.
    Description: Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are an increasingly capable robotic platform, with embedded acoustic sensing to facilitate navigation, communication, and collaboration. The global positioning system (GPS), ubiquitous for air- and terrestrial-based drones, cannot position a submerged AUV. Current methods for acoustic underwater navigation employ a deterministic sound speed to convert recorded travel time into range. In acoustically complex propagation environments, however, accurate navigation is predicated on how the sound speed structure affects propagation. The Arctic’s Beaufort Gyre provides an excellent case study for this relationship via the Beaufort Lens, a recently observed influx of warm Pacific water that forms a widespread yet variable sound speed lens throughout the gyre. At short ranges, the lens intensifies multipath propagation and creates a dramatic shadow zone, deteriorating acoustic communication and navigation performance. The Arctic also poses the additional operational challenge of an ice-covered, GPSdenied environment. This dissertation demonstrates a framework for a physics-based, model-aided, real-time conversion of recorded travel time into range—the first of its kind—which was essential to the successful AUV deployment and recovery in the Beaufort Sea, in March 2020. There are three nominal steps. First, we investigate the spatio-temporal variability of the Beaufort Lens. Second, we design a human-in-the-loop graphical decision-making framework to encode desired sound speed profile information into a lightweight, digital acoustic message for onboard navigation and communication. Lastly, we embed a stochastic, ray-based prediction of the group velocity as a function of extrapolated source and receiver locations. This framework is further validated by transmissions among GPS-aided modem buoys and improved upon to rival GPS accuracy and surpass GPS precision. The Arctic is one of the most sensitive regions to climate change, and as warmer surface temperatures and shrinking sea ice extent continue to deviate from historical conditions, the region will become more accessible and navigable. Underwater robotic platforms to monitor these environmental changes, along with the inevitable rise in human traffic related to trade, fishing, tourism, and military activity, are paramount to coupling national security with international climate security.
    Description: Office of Naval Research (N00014-14-1-0214) — GOATS’14 Adaptive and Collaborative Exploitation of 3-Dimensional Environmental Acoustics in Distributed Undersea Networks Draper Laboratory Incorporated (SC001-0000001039) — Positioning System for Deep Ocean Navigation (POSYDON) Office of Naval Research (N00014-16-1-2129) — MURI: The Information Content of Ocean Noise: Theory and Experiment Office of Naval Research (N00014-17-1-2474) — Environmentally Adaptive Acoustic Communication and Navigation in the New Arctic Office of Naval Research (N00014-19-1-2716) — TFO: Assessing Realism and Uncertainties in Navy Decision Aids Department of Defense, Office of Naval Research — National Defense, Science, and Engineering Graduate Fellowship
    Keywords: Beaufort Lens ; GPS-denied underwater navigation ; Marine robotics
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 69
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June 2021.
    Description: Global temperature rise and increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels have affected the health of the world’s ocean and water ecosystems, impacting the balances of natural carbon cycling and causing ocean acidification. Additionally, as global temperatures rise, thawing permafrost has stimulated increased release of methane (CH4), a gas with a shorter lifetime in the atmosphere but with even more heat trapping ability than CO2. In situ analysis of dissolved gas content in surface waters is currently performed with large, expensive instruments, such as spectrometers, which are coupled with gas equilibration systems, which extract dissolved gas from water and feed it to the sensor. Accurate, low cost, and portable sensors are needed to measure the dissolved CH4 and CO2 concentration in water systems to quantify their release and understand their relationship to the global carbon budget. At the same time, while greenhouse gases are well established threats to water ecosystems, the ubiquity and potential consequences of microplastics in aqueous environments are just beginning to be recognized by the environmental research community. Microplastics (MPs) are small particles of polymer debris, commonly defined as being between 1 μm and 1000 μm. Despite the pervasiveness of MPs, our ability to characterize MPs in the environment is limited by the lack of technologies for rapidly and accurately identifying and quantifying MPs. This thesis is concerned with the engineering challenges prompted by the need for high quality and quantity environmental data to better study and the impact, cycling, and prevalence of these pollutants in aqueous environments. Three distinct investigations are presented here. First, the design of the Low-Cost Gas Extraction and Measurement System (LC-GEMS) for dissolved CO2 is presented. At just under $600 dollar to build, the LC-GEMS is an ultra-portable, toolbox-sized instrument for dissolved gas sensing in near-surface waters. The LCGEMS was characterized in the lab and demonstrated linear relationships with dissolved CO2 as well as temperature. Lab calibrations and subsequent field testing in the Little Sippewissett Marsh, in Falmouth, Massachusetts showed that the LCGEMS captures both diurnal and minute-time scale trends in dissolved CO2. Second, this thesis presents the novel design of three simple and low-cost planar nanophotonic and plasmonic structures as optical transducers for measuring dissolved CH4. Through simulations, the sensitivity of the structures are evaluated and found to exhibit superior performance in the reflectance intensity readout mode to that of the standard surface-plasmon-polariton-mode Spreeta sensor. A practical, small, and low-cost implementation of this chip with a simple intensity-based measurement scheme is proposed. This design is novel in the space of dissolved gas monitoring because it shows potential to measure directly in the water phase while being robust and low-cost to implement. Finally, this thesis presents a literature review and perspective to motivate the development of field-deployable microplastic sensing techniques. A framework for field-deployable microplastic sensing is presented and seeks to inform the MP community of the potential in both traditional MP analysis techniques and unconventional methods for creating rapid and automated MP sensors. The field-deployabilty framework addresses a full scope of practical/technological trade-offs to be considered for portable MP detection.
    Keywords: Dissolved gas ; Microplastics ; Instrumentation
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  • 70
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2021.
    Description: As the western boundary current of the North Atlantic, the Gulf Stream is a well established area of interest for the United States Navy, predominately due to its proximity to the continental shelf and the associated challenges of acoustic propagation across large property gradients. Autonomous underwater gliders conduct routine, high-resolution surveys along the U.S. East Coast, including within the Gulf Stream. These observations are assimilated into the operational Navy Coastal Ocean Model (NCOM). An investigation of the forecast-to-nowcast changes in the model for 2017 demonstrates the impact of the observations on the model. The magnitude of model change as a function of distance from nearest new observation reveals relatively large impact of glider observations within a radius of 𝒪(100) km. Glider observations are associated with larger local impact than Argo data, likely due to glider sampling focusing on large spatial gradients. Due to the advective nature of the Gulf Stream system, the impact of glider observations in the model is anisotropic with larger impacts extending downstream from observation locations. Forecast-to-nowcast changes in modeled temperature, salinity, and density result in improved agreement between observed and modeled ocean structure within the upper 200 m over the 24 hours between successive model runs.
    Description: This research was funded via the United States Navy’s Civilian Institution Program with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program (MIT/WHOI JP). Glider observations and analyses have been generously supported by the National Science Foundation (OCE-0220769, OCE-1558521, OCE-1633911, OCE-1923362), NOAA’s Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program (NA14OAR4320158, NA19OAR4320074), the Office of Naval Research (N000141713040), Eastman Chemical Corporation, WHOI’s Oceans and Climate Change Institute, and the W. Van Alan Clark, Jr. Chair for Excellence in Oceanography at WHOI (awarded to Breck Owens).
    Keywords: Model ; Glider ; Gulf Stream
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 71
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2021.
    Description: This thesis analyzes data from two types of unique drifter experiments in order to characterize two aspects of ocean flows that are often difficult to study. First, vertical velocities and their associated transport processes are often challenging to observe in the real ocean since vertical velocities are typically orders of magnitude smaller than horizontal velocities in mesoscale and submesoscale flows. Second, Lagrangian coherent structures (LCS) are features which categorize ocean flows into regimes of distinct behavior. These structures are also difficult to quantify in the real ocean, since sets of gridded trajectories from real ocean data (rather than model fields) are rarely available. The first experiment uses drifters drogued at multiple depths in the Alboran Sea to observe and characterize the ocean’s vertical structure, particularly near a strong front where vertical velocities are expected to be much stronger than other regions of the Ocean. The second experiment uses a roughly gridded pattern of surface drifters in the Gulf of Mexico to study LCSs as quantified by methods from dynamical systems such as finitetime Lyapunov exponents (FTLEs), trajectory arc-length, correlation dimension, dilation, Lagrangian-averaged vorticity deviation (LAVD), and spectral clustering. This thesis includes the first attempt to apply these dynamical systems techniques to real drifters for LCS detection. Overall, these experiments and the methods used in this paper are shown to be promising new techniques for quantifying both the vertical structure of ocean flows and Lagrangian Coherent Structures of flows using real drifter data. Future work may involve modified versions of the experiments, with denser sets of ocean drifters in the horizontal and/or vertical directions.
    Description: My Masters studies in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program were funded by the US Navy Civilian Institution Office.
    Keywords: Lagrangian coherent structures ; Finite-time Lyapunov exponents ; Vertical transport
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  • 72
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Chemical Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2021.
    Description: Phytoplankton are communities of diverse groups of prokaryotic and eukaryotic single-celled organisms responsible for nearly 50% of global primary production. The relative abundance of individual groups changes dynamically in response to environmental perturbations. Recent studies suggest that such changes are primarily driven by the distinct physiological responses employed by each group towards a particular perturbation. Although knowledge of some of these responses has come to light in recent years, many aspects of their metabolisms remain unknown. We attempt to address this gap by studying the metabolism of several phytoplankton groups using metabolomics. Firstly, we developed a method to enhance the analysis of untargeted metabolomics data. Secondly, we constructed two conceptual models describing how metabolism of the raphidophyte Heterosigma akashiwo responds to phosphorus and nitrogen stress. These conceptual models revealed several new stress response mechanisms not previously reported in other phytoplankton. Finally, we compared the metabolic changes of several distinct phytoplankton groups to uncover possible adaptation and acclimations that distinguish them. This analysis revealed several pathways and metabolites that represent the studied groups. The contributions of these pathways and metabolites towards physiology may support the ecological fitness of these organisms.
    Description: None of this work would have been possible without a variety of funding sources. I was supported for three years by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and one year with a GEM fellowship. The research was carried out with grants from the MIT Microbiome Center (Award ID #6936800, EBK), the Simons Foundation (Award ID #509034, EBK), the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (Award ID #3304 EBK), the National Science Foundation (Award ID #OCE-0619608 to EBK and OCE-1057447 to EBK and MCKS) and the WHOI Ocean Ventures Fund.
    Keywords: Phytoplankton ; Metabolism ; Metbolomics
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 73
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2022.
    Description: Diving operations are inherently complex due to navigation and communication limitations. Until recently, fixed-beacon acoustic localization techniques have served as the primary means of improving diver navigation. However, modern artificial intelligence and acoustic modem technologies have enabled accurate relative navigation methods between a diver and an autonomous vehicle. Human-robot collaboration takes advantage of each member’s strengths to create the most effective team. This concept proves especially advantageous within the ocean domain, where humans are naturally deficient navigators. Yet humans serve as the team’s creative spirit, offering the critical thinking and flexibility needed to succeed in an unpredictable and dynamic environment. Recent underwater human-robot cooperative navigation systems typically rely on autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs), specially designed underwater vehicles, or stereo cameras. This thesis proposes a diver navigation method exhibiting significantly improved accuracy over dead reckoning without relying on a surface presence, cameras, or fixed acoustic beacons. Specifically, we develop and evaluate the communication architecture and autonomous behaviors required to guide a diver to a target location using subsurface humanautonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) teaming with no requirement for ocean current data or exact diver speeds. By depending on acoustic communication and commercial AUV navigation capabilities, our method has increased accessibility, applicability, and robustness over former techniques. We utilize the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Micromodem 2’s twoway-travel-time (TWTT) capability to enable range-only single-beacon navigation between two kayaks serving as proxies for the diver and Remote Environmental Monitoring Units (REMUS) 100 AUV. During processing, a nonlinear least-squares (NLS) method, called incremental smoothing and mapping 2 (iSAM2), utilizes odometry and range measurements to provide real-time diver position estimates given unknown ocean currents. Field experiments demonstrate an average online endpoint error of 4.53 meters after transits four hundred meters long. Additionally, simulations test our method’s performance in more challenging situations than those experienced in the field. Overall, this research progresses the interoperability of divers and AUVs.
    Description: The United States Navy funded my graduate education. The Office of Naval Research also partially supported this work under grant N00014-18-1-2832.
    Keywords: Human-autonomy teaming ; Autonomous underwater vehicle ; Diver navigation
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  • 74
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Chemical Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution May 2022.
    Description: Marine microbes require copper (Cu) for a variety of key enzymes and can therefore experience limitation when concentrations are low. However, when Cu concentrations are too high, it becomes toxic causing decreased cell growth and even cell death. Laboratory culture experiments have shown that a diverse array of microbes produce organic ligands that complex Cu (CuL) and buffer the free ion concentration, which is the most bioavailable fraction. In this way, the microbes impose a control on the speciation of Cu, decreasing the toxic effects of Cu and making seawater conditions favorable for growth. Studies have shown that CuL complexes produced in laboratory cultures have similar complexation strengths to those found in seawater samples, which suggests a biological source of CuLs in seawater where dissolved Cu is almost entirely bound by organic ligands. However, information about individual CuL complexes is lacking which limits our understanding of the sources, sinks, and cycling of dissolved Cu. In order to fill this gap in knowledge, molecular level information about CuL complexes produced in culture and found in seawater must be obtained. To investigate this, liquid chromatography (LC) was coupled to two mass spectrometers (MS), an inductively coupled plasma (ICP) MS and an electrospray ionization (ESI) MS. By using data supplied by both techniques, the molecular charateristics of CuLs were determined laboratory cultures of the marine diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum and the cyanobacterium Synechococcus, as well as investigating the distribution of CuLs in natural seawater samples along a line from 56°N to 20°S, along 152°W through the north and central Pacific Ocean. The CuLs identified in laboratory cultures had molecular formulae and fragmentation patterns characteristic of linear tetrapyrroles, a group of organic compounds commonly found in biological systems. This identification was further supported by absorbance and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The distribution of CuLs in the Pacific Ocean showed a highly dynamic and complex mixture of ligands, closely tied to biological cycles.
    Description: Funding for this work was provided by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF award 1122374) for providing three years of funding. Thank you to the National Science Foundation Chemical Oceanography Program (NSF award OCE-1736280 and OCE-2045223) and the Simons Collaboration on Ocean Processes and Ecology (award P49476). A portion of this work was performed at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida, which is supported through NSF DMR 11-57490, and the State of Florida.
    Keywords: Organic ligands ; Copper ; LC-MS
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  • 75
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Chemical Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution May 2022.
    Description: Removal of particulate organic carbon (POC) from sunlit surface waters into the deep ocean represents a climatically important sink of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), linking the biogeochemical cycling of POC to CO2-driven climate change. As POC is not well preserved in the sediment record, other proxies, including the chemistry of barium (Ba) in the ocean and through the sedimentary record, offer an avenue to investigate oceanic carbon export through Earth’s history. This thesis seeks to constrain the controls on the formation, cycling, and isotopic signature of the main particulate phase of marine barium, the mineral barite (BaSO4) through its inception in the water column, during deposition, and ultimately into the rock record. To that end, I characterize the depth, spatial region, and general controls on particulate Ba formation in the South Pacific Ocean through shipboard experimentation and find that particulate Ba forms mainly in the surface of the Polar Frontal Zone in the presence of large particles and microbial activity. Next, I characterize the effect of ion exchange on BaSO4, a process previously unstudied under marine conditions, in a laboratory setting. Ion exchange occurs rapidly between dissolved Ba and BaSO4 and imparts a characteristic net offset between the Ba isotope composition of the dissolved and solid phase, which arises through a combination of Ba isotope fractionation during both precipitation and dissolution. Finally, I investigate the role of ion exchange in marine settings using co-located pore fluids and sedimented BaSO4. Modeling constrained by data from natural samples produce results that are consistent with the laboratory study, suggesting that this mode of isotopic fractionation impacts Ba isotopes in the environment and must be accounted for when applying Ba based climate proxies.
    Description: Funding for this work was provided by the National Science Foundation (OCE-2023456 & OCE-1827401), the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Ocean Ventures Fund, a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (2017250048), and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
    Keywords: Barium isotopes ; Geochemistry ; Paleoceanography
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  • 76
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2021.
    Description: The Gulf Stream, the western boundary current of the subtropical North Atlantic, plays a key role in the Earth’s climate system with its poleward volume and heat transports being major components of the upper limb of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Extensive observations collected using Spray autonomous underwater gliders from 2004 through 2020 fill a 1500-km-long gap in longer-term sustained subsurface measurements of the Gulf Stream. The gliders provide concurrent, high-resolution measurements of Gulf Stream hydrography and velocity over more than 15 degrees of latitude between Florida and New England. These observations are used to characterize the along-stream evolution of Gulf Stream volume transport; its long-known poleward increase is shown to result primarily from entrainment of subthermocline waters. Antarctic Intermediate Water, which makes up the deepest waters within the Gulf Stream in the Florida Strait, is eroded through both vertical mixing and lateral stirring as it flows downstream. Satellite-based observations of sea surface height coincident with the glider observations are used to evaluate the efficacy of inferring Gulf Stream transport from remotely sensed measurements. The detailed analyses of Gulf Stream transport and water property evolution herein provide targets for regional and global circulation models to replicate.
    Description: We gratefully acknowledge funding from the National Science Foundation (OCE-0220769, OCE-1633911, OCE-1923362, OCE-1558521), NOAA’s Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program (NA14OAR4320158, NA19OAR4320074), the Office of Naval Research (N000141713040), WHOI’s Oceans and Climate Change Institute, Eastman Chemical Company, and the W. Van Alan Clark, Jr. Chair for Excellence in Oceanography at WHOI (awarded to Breck Owens).
    Keywords: Gulf Stream ; Autonomous underwater gliders ; Volume transport
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  • 77
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Chemical Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2022.
    Description: Coastal ecosystems provide key services that benefit human wellbeing yet are undergoing rapid degradation due to natural and anthropogenic pressures. This thesis seeks to understand how disturbances impact salt marsh and estuarine ecosystem functioning in order to refine their role in coastal ecosystem service delivery and predict future resilience. Salt marsh survival relative to sealevel rise increasingly relies on the accumulation and preservation of soil organic carbon (SOC). Firstly, I characterized SOC development and turnover in a New England salt marsh and found that salt marsh soils typically store marsh grass-derived compounds that are reworked over centuries-to-millennia. Next, I assessed how two common marsh disturbances – natural ponding and anthropogenic mosquito ditching – affect salt marsh carbon cycling and storage. Salt marsh ponds deepen through soil erosion and decomposition of long-buried marsh peat. Further, the SOC lost during pond development is not fully recouped once drained ponds are revegetated and virtually indistinguishable from the surrounding marsh. Mosquito ditches, which were installed in ~ 90% of New England salt marshes during the Great Depression, did not significantly alter marsh carbon storage. In Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, a US National Estuary, we tested relationships among measures of estuarine water quality, recreational activity, and local socioeconomic conditions to understand how the benefits of cultural ecosystem services are affected by shifts in water quality associated with global change and anthropogenic activity. Over a 24-year period, water quality degradation coinciding with increases in Chlorophyll a is associated with declines in fishery abundance and cultural ecosystem service values ($0.08 – 0.67 million USD). In combination, incorporation of both anthropogenic and natural disturbances to coastal ecosystem functioning and service delivery can produce improved estimates of ecosystem service valuation for effective resource decision-making under future climate scenarios.
    Description: Funding for this work was provided by John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (Grant no. 14-106159-000-CFP), National Science Foundation (OCE1233678), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – National Estuaries Research Reserve Collaborative (NA14OAR4170104 and NA- 14NOS4190145), Woods Hole Sea Grant (NA14OAR4170104), MIT Sea Grant (subaward number 5710004045), Ocean Ventures Fund, the Marine Policy Center Johnson Endowment, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
    Keywords: Salt marsh ; Geochemistry ; Carbon storage
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  • 78
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-10-20
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Marine Geology & Geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution May 2022.
    Description: It is a scientifically accepted fact that the Earth’s climate is presently undergoing significant changes with the potential for immense negative impacts on human society. As evidence of these impacts become clear and common, it becomes ever more important to constrain the nature, magnitude, and speed of changes to Earth systems. A fundamentally important tool to this understanding is the Earth’s past, recorded in the geologic record. There, lie examples of climate change under various forcings: important data for understanding the fundamental dynamics of climate change on our planet. However, when a climate signal is written in the geologic record, it is coded into the language of proxies and distorted by time. This thesis endeavors to decode that record using a variety of computational methods on a number of challenging proxies, to draw more information from the climate past than has previously been possible. First, machine learning and computer vision are used to decipher the primary, centimeter-scale textures of carbonate deposits in Searles Valley and Mono Lake, California. This work is able to connect facies in the tufa at Searles, grown during the Last Glacial Period, and those forming presently at Mono Lake. Next, the tracks of icebergs purged during Heinrich Events are simulated using the MIT General Circulation Model. This work, running multiple experiments exploring different aspects internal and external to the icebergs, reveals wind and sediment partitioning as centrally important to the spatial extent of Heinrich Layers. Each of these works considers a traditional geologic archive – a carbonate facies, a marine sediment layer – and uses computational methods to approach that archive from a different perspective. By applying these new methods, more information can be gleaned from the geologic record, building a richer narrative of the Earth’s climate history. The final chapter of this thesis discusses effective teaching and strategies for building communities to support teaching practice in Earth Science departments.
    Description: This thesis work was funded by the MIT EAPS Rasmussen and Whiteman Fellowships, NSF Project Number NSF-EAR-1903544, and the WHOI Academic Programs Office.
    Keywords: Paleoclimate ; Iceberg ; Modeling
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  • 79
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-27
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2020.
    Description: Over the last 20 years, our understanding of the meridional overturning circulation has improved, but primarily in a two-dimensional, zonally-averaged framework. In this thesis, I have pushed beyond this simplification and shown that the additional complexity of meanders, storm tracks, and other zonal asymmetries is necessary to reproduce the lowest-order behavior of the overturning circulation. First I examined the role of basin width for determining whether the Atlantic or Pacific oceans experience deep convection. I used a two layered model and a rectangular single-basin model to show that the basin width, in combination with scalings for the overturning circulation make the overturning relatively weaker in the wider basin, priming it for a convection shut down. In addition to this large-scale work, I have examined Southern Ocean-like meanders using a hierarchy of idealized models to understand the role of bottom topography in determining how the large-scale circulation responds to climate change scenarios. These are useful because they preserve the lowest-order behavior, while remaining simple enough to understand. I tested the response of the stratification and transport in the Southern Ocean to changes in wind using a highly-idealized two-layer quasi-geostrophic model. In addition to showing that meanders are necessary to reproduce the behavior of the Southern Ocean, I found that strong winds concentrate the baroclinic and barotropic instabilities downstream of the bottom topography and weaken the instabilities elsewhere due to a form-drag process. With weak winds, however, the system is essentially symmetric in longitude, like a flat-bottomed ocean. This result is consistent with observations of elevated turbulence downstream of major topography in the Southern Ocean. My next study investigated a more realistic Southern Ocean-like channel, with and without bottom topography, and examined the three-dimensional circulation in order to understand where vertical transport occurs and develop a picture of the pathways taken by each individual water parcel. I found that the vertical transport happens in very isolated locations, just downstream of topography. Finally, I added a biogeochemical model to my simulations and found that carbon fluxes are enhanced near topography, again highlighting the role of zonal asymmetries.
    Description: I have been funded by the American Meteorological Society’s Graduate Fellowship, as well as the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship. I have also been supported by NSF OCE-1536515 and NCAR Large Scale Computing Award UMIT0025.
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  • 80
    Publication Date: 2022-05-27
    Description: Author Posting. © Oxford University Press, 2021. This article is posted here by permission of [publisher] for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Lund, S., Acton, G., Clement, B., Okada, M., & Keigwin, L. On the relationship between palaeomagnetic secular variation and excursions-records from MIS 8-ODP leg 172. Geophysical Journal International, 225(2), (2021): 1129-1141, https://doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggaa564.
    Description: Palaeomagnetic secular variation (PSV) and excursion data obtained across MIS 8 (243–300 ka) from the western North Atlantic Ocean ODP (Ocean Drilling Program) sites 1060–1063 show composite high-resolution PSV records (both directions and relative palaeointensity) developed for each site and intercompared. Two methods of chronostratigraphy allow us to date these records. First, we used published results that compared the calcium carbonate records of ODP Leg 172 sediments and tuned them with Milankovich cyclicity. We also compared our palaeointensity records with the PISO-1500 global palaeointensity record that was dated with oxygen isotope stratigraphy. We prefer the PISO-1500 record to date our cores. Two excursions are preserved in our PSV records—Excursions 8α and 9α. Our revised age estimates for both excursions are 8α (236.7–239.8 ka) and 9α (283.7–286.9 ka). We have compared shipboard measurements of the two excursions with u-channel measurements of selected excursion intervals. Excursion 8α is interpreted as a ‘Class II’ excursion (local reversal) with in-phase inclination and declination changes; Excursion 9α is a ‘Class I’ excursion with 90° out-of-phase inclination and declination changes. Averaged directions (after removal of true excursional directions) and relative palaeointensity in 3 and 9 ka overlapping intervals show significant PSV directional variability over 104 yr timescales that is regionally correlatable among the four sites. A notable pattern of angular dispersion variability involves most time spent with low (∼10°) dispersion, with three shorter intervals of high (∼25°) dispersion. The relative palaeointensity variability also shows significant variability over 104 yr timescales with three notable intervals of low palaeointensity in all four records and a direct correspondence between the three low-palaeointensity intervals and the three intervals of high angular dispersion. The two magnetic field excursions occur in two of the three low-palaeointensity/high-dispersion intervals. This suggests that the geomagnetic field operates in two states between reversals, one with regular to high palaeointensity and low directional variability and one with low palaeointensity and significantly higher directional variability and excursions.
    Keywords: Geomagnetic excursions ; Palaeointensity ; Palaeomagnetic secular variation
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  • 81
    Publication Date: 2022-05-27
    Description: © The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Suca, J. J., Wiley, D. N., Silva, T. L., Robuck, A. R., Richardson, D. E., Glancy, S. G., Clancey, E., Giandonato, T., Solow, A. R., Thompson, M. A., Hong, P., Baumann, H., Kaufman, L., & Llopiz, J. K. Sensitivity of sand lance to shifting prey and hydrography indicates forthcoming change to the northeast US shelf forage fish complex. Ices Journal of Marine Science, 78(3), (2021): 1023–1037, https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsaa251.
    Description: Northern sand lance (Ammodytes dubius) and Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus) represent the dominant lipid-rich forage fish species throughout the Northeast US shelf and are critical prey for numerous top predators. However, unlike Atlantic herring, there is little research on sand lance or information about drivers of their abundance. We use intra-annual measurements of sand lance diet, growth, and condition to explain annual variability in sand lance abundance on the Northeast US Shelf. Our observations indicate that northern sand lance feed, grow, and accumulate lipids in the late winter through summer, predominantly consuming the copepod Calanus finmarchicus. Sand lance then cease feeding, utilize lipids, and begin gonad development in the fall. We show that the abundance of C. finmarchicus influences sand lance parental condition and recruitment. Atlantic herring can mute this effect through intra-guild predation. Hydrography further impacts sand lance abundance as increases in warm slope water decrease overwinter survival of reproductive adults. The predicted changes to these drivers indicate that sand lance will no longer be able to fill the role of lipid-rich forage during times of low Atlantic herring abundance—changing the Northeast US shelf forage fish complex by the end of the century.
    Description: Research was funded by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (IA agreement M17PG0019; DNW, LK, HB, and JKL), including a subaward via the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation (18-11-B-203). Additional support came from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Woods Hole Sea Grant Program (NA18OAR4170104, Project No. R/O-57; JKL, HB, and DNW) and a National Science Foundation Long-term Ecological Research grant for the Northeast US Shelf Ecosystem (OCE 1655686; JKL). JJS was funded by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship programme. ARR was funded by an NOAA Nancy Foster Scholarship.
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 82
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    Unknown
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-27
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Physical Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2020.
    Description: The Atlantic Water (AW) Layer in the Arctic Subpolar gyre sTate Estimate (ASTE), a regional, medium-resolution coupled ocean-sea ice state estimate, is analyzed for the first time using bounding isopycnals. A surge of AW, marked by rapid increases in mean AW Layer potential temperature and AW Layer thickness, begins two years into the state estimate (2004) and traverses the Arctic Ocean along boundary current pathways at approximately 2 cm/s. The surge also alters AW flow direction and speed including a significant reversal in flow direction along the Lomonosov Ridge. The surge results in a new quasi-steady AW flow from 2010 through the end of the state estimate period in 2017. The time-mean AW circulation during this time period indicates a significant amount of AW spreads over the Lomonosov Ridge rather than directly returning along the ridge to Fram Strait. A three-layer depiction of ASTE’s overturning circulation within the AO indicates AW is converted to colder, fresher Surface Layer water at a faster rate than is transformed to Bottom Water (1.2 Sv vs. 0.4 Sv). Observed AW properties compared to ASTE output indicate increasing misfit during the simulated period with ASTE’s AW Layer generally being warmer and thicker than in observations.
    Description: This research was funded via the United States Navy’s Civilian Institution Program with the MIT/WHOI Joint Program (JP). The thesis supervisor’s participation in this project was supported by National Science Foundation-Grant #PLR-1603660 and by Office of Naval Research-Grant #N000141612381. This project, specifically ASTE developed by Dr. An T. Nguyen, is also supported by National Science Foundation-Grant #PLR-1603903.
    Keywords: Atlantic water ; Arctic Ocean ; Arctic Subpolar Gyre State Estimate
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Thesis
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  • 83
    facet.materialart.
    Unknown
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-27
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2022.
    Description: Attenuation from fish can reduce the intensity of acoustic signals and significantly decrease detection range for long-range active and passive sensing in the ocean. This makes it important to understand the relevant mechanisms and accurately predict attenuation from fish in underwater acoustic sensing. Formulations for predicting attenuation from fish, however, depend on the accurate characterization of population density and spatial distribution of fish groups along long-range propagation paths, which is difficult to achieve using conventional survey methods. In previous investigations of attenuation from fish, population densities were inferred from reductions in the intensity of long-range acoustic signals caused by diel or seasonal shoaling patterns of fish groups. Here, Ocean Acoustic Waveguide Remote Sensing (OAWRS) is used to instantaneously image massive Norwegian herring shoals that stretch for thousands of square kilometers and simultaneously measure attenuation from these shoals within the active OAWRS transmissions, as well as attenuation to ship-radiated tonals detected by Passive Ocean Acoustic Waveguide Remote Sensing (POAWRS). Reductions in signal intensity are predicted using a normal-mode-based analytical theory derived from first principles for acoustic propagation and scattering through inhomogeneities in an ocean waveguide. The predictions of the waveguide attenuation formulation are in agreement with measured reductions from attenuation, where the position, size, and population density of the fish groups are characterized using OAWRS imagery as well as in situ echosounder measurements of the specific shoals occluding the propagation path. Common heuristic formulations that employ free space scattering assumptions for attenuation from fish groups are not in agreement with measurements here, and waveguide scattering theory is found to be necessary for accurate predictions. It is experimentally and theoretically shown that attenuation can be significant when the sensing frequency is near the resonance frequency of the shoaling fish, where scattering losses from the fish swimbladders and damping from fish flesh is most significant. Negligible attenuation was observed in previous OAWRS and POAWRS surveys because the frequency of the acoustic signals was sufficiently far from the swimbladder resonance peak of the shoaling fish or the packing densities of the fish shoals were not sufficiently high.
    Description: This work was supported by: • Office of Naval Research under grant number N00014-17-1-2197. • Office of Naval Research via the Graduate Traineeship Award under grant number N00014-18-1-2085.
    Keywords: Attenuation ; Fish ; Acoustic
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 84
    Publication Date: 2022-08-26
    Description: This article has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Journal International ©: The Authors 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy.
    Description: Defining the regional variability of minimum magnitude for earthquake detection is crucial for planning seismic networks. Knowing the earthquake detection magnitude values is fundamental for the optimal location of new stations and to select the priority for reactivating the stations of a seismic network in case of a breakdown. In general, the assessment of earthquake detection is performed by analysing seismic noise with spectral or more sophisticated methods. Further, to simulate amplitude values at the recording sites, spectral methods require knowledge of several geophysical parameters including rock density, S-wave velocity, corner frequency, quality factor, site specific decay parameter and so on, as well as a velocity model for the Earth's interior. The simulation results are generally expressed in terms of Mw and therefore a further conversion must be done to obtain the values of local magnitude (ML), which is the parameter commonly used for moderate and small earthquakes in seismic catalogues. Here, the relationship utilized by a seismic network to determine ML is directly applied to obtain the expected amplitude [in mm, as if it were recorded by a Wood–Anderson (WA) seismometer] at the recording site, without any additional assumptions. The station detection estimates are obtained by simply considering the ratio of the expected amplitude with respect to the background noise, also measured in mm. The seismic noise level for the station is estimated starting from four waveforms (each signal lasting 1 min) sampled at various times of the day for a period of one week. The proposed method is tested on Italian seismic events occurring in 2019 by using the locations of 16.879 earthquakes recorded by 374 stations. The first results indicate that by evaluating the station noise level with 5-s windows, a representative sample of the variability in expected noise level is generated for every station, even if only 4 min of signal per day over a week of recordings is used. The method was applied to define the detection level of the Italian National Seismic Network (RSN). The RSN detection level represents a reference for the definition and application of guidelines in the field of monitoring of subsurface industrial activities in Italy. The proposed approach can be successfully applied to define the current performance of a local seismic network (managed by private companies) and to estimate the expected further improvements, requested to fulfil the guidelines with the installation of new seismic stations. This method has been tested in Italy and can be reproduced wherever the local magnitude ML, based on synthetic WA records, is used.
    Description: Published
    Description: 1283–1297
    Description: 4T. Sismicità dell'Italia
    Description: JCR Journal
    Keywords: Time-series analysis ; Earthquake ground motions ; Seismic noise ; Induced seismicity ; 04.06. Seismology ; 05.04. Instrumentation and techniques of general interest
    Repository Name: Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV)
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  • 85
    Publication Date: 2022-08-19
    Description: © The Author(s), 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Aoki, L. R., Brisbin, M. M., Hounshell, A. G., Kincaid, D. W., Larson, E., Sansom, B. J., Shogren, A. J., Smith, R. S., & Sullivan-Stack, J. Preparing aquatic research for an extreme future: call for improved definitions and responsive, multidisciplinary approaches. Bioscience, 72(6), (2022): 508-520, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biac020.
    Description: Extreme events have increased in frequency globally, with a simultaneous surge in scientific interest about their ecological responses, particularly in sensitive freshwater, coastal, and marine ecosystems. We synthesized observational studies of extreme events in these aquatic ecosystems, finding that many studies do not use consistent definitions of extreme events. Furthermore, many studies do not capture ecological responses across the full spatial scale of the events. In contrast, sampling often extends across longer temporal scales than the event itself, highlighting the usefulness of long-term monitoring. Many ecological studies of extreme events measure biological responses but exclude chemical and physical responses, underscoring the need for integrative and multidisciplinary approaches. To advance extreme event research, we suggest prioritizing pre- and postevent data collection, including leveraging long-term monitoring; making intersite and cross-scale comparisons; adopting novel empirical and statistical approaches; and developing funding streams to support flexible and responsive data collection.
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 86
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    Unknown
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-09-14
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Oceanography and Applied Ocean Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2020.
    Description: Carbonates are prevalent in many modern and ancient lacustrine settings, but reconstructions of past lake levels or environments from such materials have been hindered by poor chronology. Uranium-thorium (U-Th) dating has the potential to fill a gap in current geochronological tools for such archives, but past attempts have been confounded by poor understanding of the complex makeup of lacustrine carbonates, leading to misguided conclusions on both the utility of certain geochronological tools as well as the age of these deposits. This thesis showcases strategies for the successful application of U-Th geochronology to two types of lacustrine carbonates: lake bottom sediments and tufa deposits. Chapter 2 presents a systematic approach to U-Th dating carbonate-rich lake sediments using the ICDP sediment core from Lake Junín, Peru. Chapters 3–5 seek to demonstrate the descriptive power of combining precise U-Th dates on tufas and other carbonates with geologic observations of their depositional context at all scales—from the outcrop to the microscale. Here, the tufas originate from a transect of closed-basin lakes in the central Andes of northern Chile. With improved sample selection and leveraging of the incontrovertible constraints of stratigraphy and coevality, we are able to test the validity of U-Th data. Combining quality-controlled geochronological constraints with careful characterization of different carbonate facies can yield new insight on the character of lake level changes. These case studies offer frameworks for interpreting scattered geochronologic data of any size or system. By embracing the noise in our data, we now have a richer understanding of the controls on uranium in these deposits. Of all the lessons learned, we hold the following as most important: for the determination of the age of lacustrine carbonates, geologic context—in the form of sedimentological observations, additional geochemical data, and paleoecological descriptions—is of equal importance to the numerical accuracy and precision of geochronological measurements.
    Description: Funding sources: National Science Foundation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Geological Society of America, MIT MISTI, Comer Foundation, American Philosophical Society, National Geographic Society, Explorers Club.
    Keywords: Carbonates ; Tufa ; Geochronology
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 87
    Publication Date: 2022-06-07
    Description: Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2021. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Oxford University Press for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Toxicological Sciences 182(20), (2021): 310-326, https://doi.org/10.1093/toxsci/kfab066.
    Description: Harmful algal blooms produce potent neurotoxins that accumulate in seafood and are hazardous to human health. Developmental exposure to the harmful algal bloom toxin, domoic acid (DomA), has behavioral consequences well into adulthood, but the cellular and molecular mechanisms of DomA developmental neurotoxicity are largely unknown. To assess these, we exposed zebrafish embryos to DomA during the previously identified window of susceptibility and used the well-known startle response circuit as a tool to identify specific neuronal components that are targeted by exposure to DomA. Exposure to DomA reduced startle responsiveness to both auditory/vibrational and electrical stimuli, and even at the highest stimulus intensities tested, led to a dramatic reduction of one type of startle (short-latency c-starts). Furthermore, DomA-exposed larvae had altered kinematics for both types of startle responses tested, exhibiting shallower bend angles and slower maximal angular velocities. Using vital dye staining, immunolabeling, and live imaging of transgenic lines, we determined that although the sensory inputs were intact, the reticulospinal neurons required for short-latency c-starts were absent in most DomA-exposed larvae. Furthermore, axon tracing revealed that DomA-treated larvae also showed significantly reduced primary motor neuron axon collaterals. Overall, these results show that developmental exposure to DomA targets large reticulospinal neurons and motor neuron axon collaterals, resulting in measurable deficits in startle behavior. They further provide a framework for using the startle response circuit to identify specific neural populations disrupted by toxins or toxicants and to link these disruptions to functional consequences for neural circuit function and behavior.
    Description: This research was supported by a WHOI Von Damm and Ocean Ridge Initiative Fellowships to J.M.P. and the Woods Hole Center for Oceans and Human Health (NIH: P01ES021923 and P01ES028938; NSF: OCE-1314642 and OCE-1840381).
    Description: 2022-06-07
    Keywords: domoic acid ; harmful algal blooms ; harmful algal bloom toxins ; developmental toxicity ; startle response ; escape response ; startle circuit
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Preprint
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  • 88
    facet.materialart.
    Unknown
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Physical Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2020.
    Description: Airborne eXpendable BathyThermographs (AXBTs) are air-launched, single use temperature-depth probes that telemeter temperature observations as a VHF-modulated frequency. This study describes the AXBT Realtime Editing System (ARES), which was developed to receive and quality control temperature-depth profiles with no external hardware other than a VHF radio receiver. The ARES Data Acquisition System performs fast Fourier transforms on windowed segments of demodulated signal transmitted from the AXBT and uses the resulting spectra to identify valid temperature-depth observations. When evaluated using 389 profiles, the ARES data acquisition system produced temperature-depth profiles nearly identical to those generated using a Sippican MK-21 processor, while reducing the amount of noise from VHF interference included in those profiles. The ARES Profile Editor applies a series of automated checks to identify and correct common profile discrepancies, before displaying the profile on an editing interface that provides simple user controls to make additional corrections. When evaluated against 1,177 tropical Atlantic and Pacific AXBT profiles, the ARES automated quality control system successfully corrected 87% of the profiles without any manual intervention necessary. The ARES Data Acquisition and Profile Editing Systems performed exceptionally well when operationally tested with 44 AXBTs during Hurricane Dorian (2019), enabling high resolution observations across key oceanic features including Dorian’s cold wake and the Gulf Stream. Necessary future work includes improvements on the automated quality control algorithm and evaluation against a more diverse dataset of temperature-depth profiles.
    Description: This research was funded by the U.S. Navy’s Civilian Institution (CIVINS) Office with the MIT-WHOI Joint Program. Additionally, this work was funded by the Office of Naval Research, grant number N000141812819.
    Keywords: Airborne Expendable Bathythermograph ; AXBT ; Upper Ocean Observations
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Thesis
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  • 89
    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: © The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Beckman, N. G., Asian, C. E., Rogers, H. S., Kogan, O., Bronstein, J. L., Bullock, J. M., Hartig, F., HilleRisLambers, J., Zhou, Y., Zurell, D., Brodie, J. F., Bruna, E. M., Cantrell, R. S., Decker, R. R., Efiom, E., Fricke, E. C., Gurski, K., Hastings, A., Johnson, J. S., Loiselle, B. A., Miriti, M. N., Neubert, M. G., Pejchar, L., Poulsen, J. R., Pufal, G., Razafindratsima, O. H., Sandor, M. E., Shea, K., Schreiber, S., Schupp, E. W., Snell, R. S., Strickland, C., & Zambrano, J. Advancing an interdisciplinary framework to study seed dispersal ecology. Aob Plants, 12(2), (2020): plz048, doi:10.1093/aobpla/plz048.
    Description: Although dispersal is generally viewed as a crucial determinant for the fitness of any organism, our understanding of its role in the persistence and spread of plant populations remains incomplete. Generalizing and predicting dispersal processes are challenging due to context dependence of seed dispersal, environmental heterogeneity and interdependent processes occurring over multiple spatial and temporal scales. Current population models often use simple phenomenological descriptions of dispersal processes, limiting their ability to examine the role of population persistence and spread, especially under global change. To move seed dispersal ecology forward, we need to evaluate the impact of any single seed dispersal event within the full spatial and temporal context of a plant’s life history and environmental variability that ultimately influences a population’s ability to persist and spread. In this perspective, we provide guidance on integrating empirical and theoretical approaches that account for the context dependency of seed dispersal to improve our ability to generalize and predict the consequences of dispersal, and its anthropogenic alteration, across systems. We synthesize suitable theoretical frameworks for this work and discuss concepts, approaches and available data from diverse subdisciplines to help operationalize concepts, highlight recent breakthroughs across research areas and discuss ongoing challenges and open questions. We address knowledge gaps in the movement ecology of seeds and the integration of dispersal and demography that could benefit from such a synthesis. With an interdisciplinary perspective, we will be able to better understand how global change will impact seed dispersal processes, and potential cascading effects on plant population persistence, spread and biodiversity.
    Description: Ideas for this manuscript initiated during the Seed Dispersal Workshop held in May 2016 at the Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center in Annapolis, MD and supported by the US National Science Foundation Grant DEB-1548194 to N.G.B. and the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center under the US National Science Foundation Grant DBI-1052875. D.Z. received funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF, grant: PZ00P3_168136/1) and from the German Science Foundation (DFG, grant: ZU 361/1-1).
    Keywords: Analytical models ; demography ; global change ; individual-based models ; long-distance seed dispersal ; population models ; seed dispersal
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 90
    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: © The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Bowen, J. L., Giblin, A. E., Murphy, A. E., Bulseco, A. N., Deegan, L. A., Johnson, D. S., Nelson, J. A., Mozdzer, T. J., & Sullivan, H. L. Not all nitrogen is created equal: differential effects of nitrate and ammonium enrichment in coastal wetlands. Bioscience, 70(12), (2020): 1108-1119, doi:10.1093/biosci/biaa140.
    Description: Excess reactive nitrogen (N) flows from agricultural, suburban, and urban systems to coasts, where it causes eutrophication. Coastal wetlands take up some of this N, thereby ameliorating the impacts on nearshore waters. Although the consequences of N on coastal wetlands have been extensively studied, the effect of the specific form of N is not often considered. Both oxidized N forms (nitrate, NO3−) and reduced forms (ammonium, NH4+) can relieve nutrient limitation and increase primary production. However, unlike NH4+, NO3− can also be used as an electron acceptor for microbial respiration. We present results demonstrating that, in salt marshes, microbes use NO3− to support organic matter decomposition and primary production is less stimulated than when enriched with reduced N. Understanding how different forms of N mediate the balance between primary production and decomposition is essential for managing coastal wetlands as N enrichment and sea level rise continue to assail our coasts.
    Description: This work was supported by the following funding sources: National Science Foundation (NSF) grant no. DEB 1902712 to LAD, JLB, DSJ, and TJM; NSF grant no. DEB 1902695 to AEG; NSF grant no. DEB 1902704 to JAN; NSF grant no. DEB 1354214 to TJM; NSF grant no. DEB 1350491 to JLB; NSF grant no. OCE 1637630 to AEG and LAD; and additional funding from the Dorr Foundation, the Department of the Interior Northeast Climate Science Center (grant no. DOI G12AC00001), and a Bullard Fellowship (Harvard University) to LAD and from the National Academies of Science, Medicine, and Engineering Gulf Research Program to JAN. Resources purchased with funds from the NSF Biological Field Stations and Marine Laboratories program (grant no. DBI 1722553, to Northeastern University) were used to generate the data for the manuscript. Initial conversations on the effects of nutrient enrichment in marshes with Scott Warren and Bruce Peterson were critical in informing the work described in the manuscript. Sam Kelsey and Jane Tucker contributed to much of the N cycling biogeochemistry; Caitlin Bauer, Frankie Leach, Paige Weber, Emily Geoghegan and Sophie Drew assisted with field work; and Joe Vineis assisted with metagenomic analysis. This is contribution 3941 from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. The data were compiled from multiple published sources. Links to published data can be found here: https://pie-lter.ecosystems.mbl.edu/data. The sequence data used to derive figure 6 are publicly available on the MG-RAST website under project number mgp84173.
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  • 91
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    Unknown
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Chemical Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution May 2022.
    Description: Study of the marine CO2 system is critical for understanding global carbon cycling and the impacts of changing ocean chemistry on marine ecosystems. This thesis describes the development of a near-continuous, in-situ dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) sensor, CHANnelized Optical System (CHANOS) II, suitable for deployment from both mobile and stationary platforms. The system delivers DIC measurements with an accuracy of 2.9 (laboratory) or 9.0 (field) μmol kg-1, at a precision of ~4.9-5.5 μmol kg-1. Time-series field deployments in the Pocasset River, MA, revealed seasonal and episodic biogeochemical shifts in DIC, including two different responses to tropical storm and nor’easter systems. Towed surface mapping deployments across Waquoit Bay, MA, highlighted the export of DIC from salt marshes through tidal water. High resolution (〈100 m) data collected during ROV deployments over deep coral mounds on the West Florida Slope revealed a much wider DIC range (~1900 – 2900 μmol kg-1) across seafloor and coral habitats than was observed through the few bottle samples collected during the dives (n = 5, 2190.9 ± 1.0 μmol kg-1). These deployments highlight the need to investigate deep sea biogeochemistry at high spatial scales in order to understand the range of environmental variation encountered by benthic communities.
    Description: Funding for this work was provided by the National Science Foundation (OCE Award No. 1233654, OCE 1635388, OCE 1841092), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (NA18OAR0110352), MIT Seagrant (2017-R/RCM-51), and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (Ocean Ventures Fund, Grassle Fellowship).
    Keywords: DIC ; sensor ; ROV
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Thesis
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  • 92
    facet.materialart.
    Unknown
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2021.
    Description: In this thesis, I explore two topics in plankton ecology with a combination of models and observations. First, I investigate the contribution of zooplankton diel vertical migration (DVM) to the vertical flux of carbon as part of the biological pump. I do this by constructing and analyzing a global model that includes DVM and is driven by satellite-based estimates of primary productivity. There has long been speculation about the significance of DVM to the biological pump, but quantitative estimates of its impact are rare. I estimate that DVM constitutes approximately 16% of the global carbon export flux associated with the biological pump and that the relative contribution of DVM is higher in subtropical latitudes. In later chapters, I build two nutrient-hytoplankton-zooplankton (NPZ) models with different levels of complexity to evaluate the role of nutrient supply and grazing in promoting phytoplankton diversity. Zooplankton switching plays a significant role in promoting diversity because it allows competing phytoplankton types to coexist in situations that would otherwise lead to competitive exclusion. When implemented in a size-structured NPZ model, stronger switching increases the evenness of the distribution of biomass between coexisting size classes, which is used as a proxy for taxonomic diversity. I also describe a particular characteristic of the Kill-the-Winner functional response (used in the NPZ models), which I have termed synergistic grazing. Synergistic grazing occurs when the grazing rate on one phytoplankton type increases as the biomass of an alternative phytoplankton type increases. This characteristic can result in unintuitive model dynamics. Finally, I describe patterns in phytoplankton community size structure in the shelfbreak region of the Northeast U.S. Shelf using high-resolution flow-cytometry measurements. I find that enhancement of phytoplankton biovolume at the shelfbreak front is common during the springtime, but these enhancement events are not associated with consistent changes in community size structure. I evaluate these results in the context of hypotheses generated based on my analysis of the NPZ models.
    Description: The research in this thesis was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF, OCE-1434000 and OCE-1657803) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the EXport Processes in the global Ocean from RemoTe Sensing (EXPORTS) field campaign (grant 80NSSC17K0692) and the North Atlantic Aerosol and MarineEcosystems Study (NAAMES, grantsNNX15AE72G and 80NSSC18K0018). Additional support came from NSF (OCE-1655686 and OCE-1657803) and the Simons Foundation (561126).
    Keywords: zooplankton ; grazing ; diversity
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 93
    Publication Date: 2022-05-27
    Description: © The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Hirschberger, C., Sleight, V. A., Criswell, K. E., Clark, S. J., & Gillis, J. A. Conserved and unique transcriptional features of pharyngeal arches in the skate (Leucoraja erinacea) and evolution of the jaw. Molecular Biology and Evolution, (2021): msab123, https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msab123
    Description: The origin of the jaw is a long-standing problem in vertebrate evolutionary biology. Classical hypotheses of serial homology propose that the upper and lower jaw evolved through modifications of dorsal and ventral gill arch skeletal elements, respectively. If the jaw and gill arches are derived members of a primitive branchial series, we predict that they would share common developmental patterning mechanisms. Using candidate and RNAseq/differential gene expression analyses, we find broad conservation of dorsoventral patterning mechanisms within the developing mandibular, hyoid and gill arches of a cartilaginous fish, the skate (Leucoraja erinacea). Shared features include expression of genes encoding members of the ventralising BMP and endothelin signalling pathways and their effectors, the joint markers nkx3.2 and gdf5 and pro-chondrogenic transcription factor barx1, and the dorsal territory marker pou3f3. Additionally, we find that mesenchymal expression of eya1/six1 is an ancestral feature of the mandibular arch of jawed vertebrates, while differences in notch signalling distinguish the mandibular and gill arches in skate. Comparative transcriptomic analyses of mandibular and gill arch tissues reveal additional genes differentially expressed along the dorsoventral axis of the pharyngeal arches, including scamp5 as a novel marker of the dorsal mandibular arch, as well as distinct transcriptional features of mandibular and gill arch muscle progenitors and developing gill buds. Taken together, our findings reveal conserved patterning mechanisms in the pharyngeal arches of jawed vertebrates, consistent with serial homology of their skeletal derivatives, as well as unique transcriptional features that may underpin distinct jaw and gill arch morphologies.
    Description: This work was supported by a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council Doctoral Training Partnership studentship to CH, by a Wolfson College Junior Research Fellowship and MBL Whitman Early Career Fellowship to VAS, and by a Royal Society University Research Fellowship (UF130182 and URF\R\191007), Royal Society Research Grant (RG140377) and University of Cambridge Sir Isaac Newton Trust Grant (14.23z) to JAG.
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 94
    Publication Date: 2022-05-27
    Description: © The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Suca, J. J., Deroba, J. J., Richardson, D. E., Ji, R., & Llopiz, J. K. Environmental drivers and trends in forage fish occupancy of the Northeast US shelf. Ices Journal of Marine Science, 78(10), (2021): 3687–3708, https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsab214.
    Description: The Northeast US shelf ecosystem is undergoing unprecedented changes due to long-term warming trends and shifts in regional hydrography leading to changes in community composition. However, it remains uncertain how shelf occupancy by the region's dominant, offshore small pelagic fishes, also known as forage fishes, has changed throughout the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Here, we use species distribution models to estimate the change in shelf occupancy, mean weighted latitude, and mean weighted depth of six forage fishes on the Northeast US shelf, and whether those trends were linked to coincident hydrographic conditions. Our results suggest that observed shelf occupancy is increasing or unchanging for most species in both spring and fall, linked both to gear shifts and increasing bottom temperature and salinity. Exceptions include decreases to observed shelf occupancy by sand lance and decreases to Atlantic herring's inferred habitat suitability in the fall. Our work shows that changes in shelf occupancy and inferred habitat suitability have varying coherence, indicating complex mechanisms behind observed shelf occupancy for many species. Future work and management can use these results to better isolate the aspects of forage fish life histories that are important for determining their occupancy of the Northeast US shelf.
    Description: Funding came from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Woods Hole Sea Grant Program (NA18OAR4170104, Project number R/O-57; RJ and JKL) and a National Science Foundation Long-term Ecological Research grant for the Northeast US Shelf Ecosystem (OCE1655686; RJ and JKL). JJS was funded by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship program.
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 95
    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: © The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Doo, S. S., Kealoha, A., Andersson, A., Cohen, A. L., Hicks, T. L., Johnson, Z., I., Long, M. H., McElhany, P., Mollica, N., Shamberger, K. E. F., Silbiger, N. J., Takeshita, Y., & Busch, D. S. The challenges of detecting and attributing ocean acidification impacts on marine ecosystems. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 77(7-8), (2020): 2411-2422, https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsaa094.
    Description: A substantial body of research now exists demonstrating sensitivities of marine organisms to ocean acidification (OA) in laboratory settings. However, corresponding in situ observations of marine species or ecosystem changes that can be unequivocally attributed to anthropogenic OA are limited. Challenges remain in detecting and attributing OA effects in nature, in part because multiple environmental changes are co-occurring with OA, all of which have the potential to influence marine ecosystem responses. Furthermore, the change in ocean pH since the industrial revolution is small relative to the natural variability within many systems, making it difficult to detect, and in some cases, has yet to cross physiological thresholds. The small number of studies that clearly document OA impacts in nature cannot be interpreted as a lack of larger-scale attributable impacts at the present time or in the future but highlights the need for innovative research approaches and analyses. We summarize the general findings in four relatively well-studied marine groups (seagrasses, pteropods, oysters, and coral reefs) and integrate overarching themes to highlight the challenges involved in detecting and attributing the effects of OA in natural environments. We then discuss four potential strategies to better evaluate and attribute OA impacts on species and ecosystems. First, we highlight the need for work quantifying the anthropogenic input of CO2 in coastal and open-ocean waters to understand how this increase in CO2 interacts with other physical and chemical factors to drive organismal conditions. Second, understanding OA-induced changes in population-level demography, potentially increased sensitivities in certain life stages, and how these effects scale to ecosystem-level processes (e.g. community metabolism) will improve our ability to attribute impacts to OA among co-varying parameters. Third, there is a great need to understand the potential modulation of OA impacts through the interplay of ecology and evolution (eco–evo dynamics). Lastly, further research efforts designed to detect, quantify, and project the effects of OA on marine organisms and ecosystems utilizing a comparative approach with long-term data sets will also provide critical information for informing the management of marine ecosystems.
    Description: SSD was funded by NSF OCE (grant # 1415268). DSB and PM were supported by the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program and Northwest Fisheries Science Center, MHL was supported by NSF OCE (grant # 1633951), ZIJ was supported by NSF OCE (grant # 1416665) and DOE EERE (grant #DE-EE008518), NJS was supported by NSF OCE (grant # 1924281), ALC was supported by NSF OCE (grant # 1737311), and AA was supported by NSF OCE (grant # 1416518). KEFS, AK, and TLH were supported by Texas A&M University. This is CSUN Marine Biology contribution (# 306).
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  • 96
    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2020. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Oxford University Press for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Toxicological Sciences (2020): kfaa158, doi:10.1093/toxsci/kfaa158.
    Description: Chemical modifications of proteins, DNA, and RNA moieties play critical roles in regulating gene expression. Emerging evidence suggests the RNA modifications (epitranscriptomics) have substantive roles in basic biological processes. One of the most common modifications in mRNA and noncoding RNAs is N6-methyladenosine (m6A). In a subset of mRNAs, m6A sites are preferentially enriched near stop codons, in 3′ UTRs, and within exons, suggesting an important role in the regulation of mRNA processing and function including alternative splicing and gene expression. Very little is known about the effect of environmental chemical exposure on m6A modifications. As many of the commonly occurring environmental contaminants alter gene expression profiles and have detrimental effects on physiological processes, it is important to understand the effects of exposure on this important layer of gene regulation. Hence, the objective of this study was to characterize the acute effects of developmental exposure to PCB126, an environmentally relevant dioxin-like PCB, on m6A methylation patterns. We exposed zebrafish embryos to PCB126 for 6 h starting from 72 h post fertilization and profiled m6A RNA using methylated RNA immunoprecipitation followed by sequencing (MeRIP-seq). Our analysis revealed 117 and 217 m6A peaks in the DMSO and PCB126 samples (false discovery rate 5%), respectively. The majority of the peaks were preferentially located around the 3′ UTR and stop codons. Statistical analysis revealed 15 m6A marked transcripts to be differentially methylated by PCB126 exposure. These include transcripts that are known to be activated by AHR agonists (eg, ahrra, tiparp, nfe2l2b) as well as others that are important for normal development (vgf, cebpd, sned1). These results suggest that environmental chemicals such as dioxin-like PCBs could affect developmental gene expression patterns by altering m6A levels. Further studies are necessary to understand the functional consequences of exposure-associated alterations in m6A levels.
    Description: National Institute of Health National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Outstanding New Environmental Scientist (NIH R01ES024915 to N.A.); Woods Hole Center for Oceans and Human Health [National Institutes of Health (NIH) (Grant P01ES028938); National Science Foundation (Grant OCE-1840381) to M. E. Hahn, J. J. Stegeman, N.A., and S.K.].
    Description: 2021-10-16
    Keywords: dioxin-like PCBs ; development ; zebrafish ; epitranscriptomics ; m6A ; MeRIP
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  • 97
    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: © The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Lamb, D. C., Hargrove, T. Y., Zhao, B., Wawrzak, Z., Goldstone, J. V., Nes, W. D., Kelly, S. L., Waterman, M. R., Stegeman, J. J., & Lepesheva, G. I. Concerning P450 evolution: structural analyses support bacterial origin of sterol 14α-demethylases. Molecular Biology and Evolution, (2020): msaa260, doi:10.1093/molbev/msaa260.
    Description: Sterol biosynthesis, primarily associated with eukaryotic kingdoms of life, occurs as an abbreviated pathway in the bacterium Methylococcus capsulatus. Sterol 14α-demethylation is an essential step in this pathway and is catalyzed by cytochrome P450 51 (CYP51). In M. capsulatus, the enzyme consists of the P450 domain naturally fused to a ferredoxin domain at the C-terminus (CYP51fx). The structure of M. capsulatus CYP51fx was solved to 2.7 Å resolution and is the first structure of a bacterial sterol biosynthetic enzyme. The structure contained one P450 molecule per asymmetric unit with no electron density seen for ferredoxin. We connect this with the requirement of P450 substrate binding in order to activate productive ferredoxin binding. Further, the structure of the P450 domain with bound detergent (which replaced the substrate upon crystallization) was solved to 2.4 Å resolution. Comparison of these two structures to the CYP51s from human, fungi, and protozoa reveals strict conservation of the overall protein architecture. However, the structure of an “orphan” P450 from nonsterol-producing Mycobacterium tuberculosis that also has CYP51 activity reveals marked differences, suggesting that loss of function in vivo might have led to alterations in the structural constraints. Our results are consistent with the idea that eukaryotic and bacterial CYP51s evolved from a common cenancestor and that early eukaryotes may have recruited CYP51 from a bacterial source. The idea is supported by bioinformatic analysis, revealing the presence of CYP51 genes in 〉1,000 bacteria from nine different phyla, 〉50 of them being natural CYP51fx fusion proteins.
    Description: The study was supported by National Institutes of Health (Grant No. R01 GM067871 to G.I.L.) and by a UK-USA Fulbright Scholarship and the Royal Society (to D.C.L.).
    Keywords: sterol biosynthesis ; evolution ; cytochrome P450 ; CYP51 redox partner ; crystallography
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  • 98
    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Zemeckis, D. R., Dean, M. J., DeAngelis, A. I., Van Parijs, S. M., Hoffman, W. S., Baumgartner, M. F., Hatch, L. T., Cadrin, S. X., & McGuire, C. H. Identifying the distribution of Atlantic cod spawning using multiple fixed and glider-mounted acoustic technologies. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 76(6), (2019): 1610-1625, doi: 10.1093/icesjms/fsz064.
    Description: Effective fishery management measures to protect fish spawning aggregations require reliable information on the spatio-temporal distribution of spawning. Spawning closures have been part of a suite of fishery management actions to rebuild the Gulf of Maine stock of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua), but difficulties remain with managing rebuilding. The objective of this study was to identify the spatial and temporal distribution of cod spawning during winter in Massachusetts Bay to improve our understanding of cod spawning dynamics and inform fisheries management. Spawning was investigated in collaboration with commercial fishermen during three winter spawning seasons (October 2013–March 2016) using acoustic telemetry and passive acoustic monitoring equipment deployed in fixed-station arrays and mounted on mobile autonomous gliders. Tagged cod exhibited spawning site fidelity and spawning primarily occurred from early November through January with a mid-December peak and some inter-annual variability. The spatial distribution of spawning was generally consistent among years with multiple hotspots in areas 〉50 m depth. Current closures encompass most of spawning, but important areas are recommended for potential modifications. Utilizing multiple complementary technologies and deployment strategies in collaboration with commercial fishermen enabled a comprehensive description of spawning and provides a valuable model for future studies.
    Description: Year 1 was jointly funded by The Nature Conservancy and Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. The remainder of this research was funded through the 2013–2014 NOAA Saltonstall Kennedy grant program (Award No. NA14NMF4270027) with additional support from the Nature Conservancy and Cabot Family Charitable Foundation.
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  • 99
    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Dong, E., Zhang, Y., Song, Z., Zhang, T., Cai, C., & Fang, N. X. Physical modeling and validation of porpoises' directional emission via hybrid metamaterials. National Science Review, 6(5), (2019): 921-928, doi:10.1093/nsr/nwz085.
    Description: In wave physics and engineering, directional emission sets a fundamental limitation on conventional simple sources as their sizes should be sufficiently larger than their wavelength. Artificial metamaterial and animal biosonar both show potential in overcoming this limitation. Existing metamaterials arranged in periodic microstructures face great challenges in realizing complex and multiphase biosonar structures. Here, we proposed a physical directional emission model to bridge the gap between porpoises’ biosonar and artificial metamaterial. Inspired by the anatomical and physical properties of the porpoise's biosonar transmission system, we fabricated a hybrid metamaterial system composed of multiple composite structures. We validated that the hybrid metamaterial significantly increased directivity and main lobe energy over a broad bandwidth both numerically and experimentally. The device displayed efficiency in detecting underwater target and suppressing false target jamming. The metamaterial-based physical model may be helpful to achieve the physical mechanisms of porpoise biosonar detection and has diverse applications in underwater acoustic sensing, ultrasound scanning, and medical ultrasonography.
    Description: E.D., Y.Z., Z.S., T.Z. and C.C. acknowledge the financial support in part by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFC1407504), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41676023, 41276040 and 41422604). N.X.F. acknowledges the support from the MIT Energy Initiative grant. Z.S. thanks the China Scholarship Council for the financial support of his oversea study in Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
    Keywords: porpoise's physical model ; metamaterials ; biosonar ; directional emission
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  • 100
    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Lin, J., Xu, Y., Sun, Z., & Zhou, Z. Mantle upwelling beneath the South China Sea and links to surrounding subduction systems. National Science Review, 6(5), (2019): 877-881, doi:10.1093/nsr/nwz123.
    Description: The evolution of the South China Sea (SCS) is directly linked to the complex subduction systems of the surrounding Pacific, Philippine Sea and Indo-Australian Plates (Fig. 1a). Major advances in the last several years are providing new insights into the SCS-mantle dynamics, through regional seismic imaging of the upper mantle [1,2], unprecedented IODP drilling expeditions (349/367/368/368X) [3–5] that obtained the oceanic basement basalt samples for the first time, geochemical analyses of the SCS-mantle source compositions [6–8] and geodynamic modeling [9,10]. Furthermore, new geological mapping, seismic imaging [11,12] and IODP drilling [13,14] have revealed evidence for significantly greater magma production at the northern SCS rifted margin, in comparison to the magma-poor end-member of the Atlantic rifted margins. This paper provides a new perspective of the SCS-mantle dynamics inspired by new observations and geodynamic modeling. We first highlight new geophysical evidence for a broad region of low-seismic-velocity anomalies in the upper mantle beneath the northern SCS, abundant magmatism during continental breakup and post-seafloor spreading, and geochemical evidence for recycled oceanic components beneath the SCS. We then present new models of layered flows in the mantle beneath the SCS, revealing two modes of plate- and subduction-driven mantle upwelling, including (i) narrow centers of mantle upwelling at shallow depths induced by divergent plate motion at seafloor-spreading centers and (ii) broad zones of mantle upwelling as a result of subduction-induced mantle-return flows at greater depths. These new observations and geodynamic studies suggest strong links between mantle upwelling beneath the SCS and surrounding subducting plates.
    Description: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41890813, 91628301, U1606401, 41976066, 91858207 and 41706056), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Y4SL021001, QYZDY-SSW-DQC005 and 133244KYSB20180029), the Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Guangzhou, GML2019ZD0205), the National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFC0309800 and 2018YFC0310100), the State Oceanic Administration (GASI-GEOGE-02) and China Ocean Mineral Resources R&D Association (DY135-S2–1-04).
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