ALBERT

Description: A hydrological monitoring station for Khumbu Glacier, Nepal, was established in a stable reach of the sole outflow channel at 4930 m a.s.l.. at approximately 27°56'02"N 86°48'44"E where meltwater breaches the lateral/terminal moraine ridge. Average water stage (S) was recorded at 30 min intervals using a Druck PDCR1730 pressure transducer and Campbell Scientific (CS) CR1000 data logger. Stage is given as DN. To derive discharge (Q), a stage-discharge rating curve was developed using 18 dilution experiments of 10% fluorescein and a Turner Designs Cyclops7 fluorometer linked to a CS CR10X datalogger. Rating curve observations covered the lowermost 50% of stage values recorded, and uncertainty in Q is estimated at 10-15%. The non-linear exponential stage-discharge relationship was given as: Q = 0.2839.e^(5.55397.S). Discharge is in m^3/s. Data extends from 14th May (DOY134) to 13th November (DOY317), and time is given as decimal-day format (DOY135.5 = 12:00 midday on DOY135).

Description: Regulation of protein phosphatase activity by endogenous protein inhibitors is an important mechanism to control protein phosphorylation in cells. We recently identified Biorientation defective 1 (Bod1) as a small protein inhibitor of protein phosphatase 2A containing the B56 regulatory subunit (PP2A-B56). This phosphatase controls the amount of phosphorylation of several kinetochore proteins and thus the establishment of load-bearing chromosome-spindle attachments in time for accurate separation of sister chromatids in mitosis. Like PP2A-B56, Bod1 directly localizes to mitotic kinetochores and is required for correct segregation of mitotic chromosomes. In this report, we have probed the spatio-temporal regulation of Bod1 during mitotic progression. Kinetochore localization of Bod1 increases from nuclear envelope breakdown until metaphase. Phosphorylation of Bod1 at threonine 95 (T95), which increases Bod1's binding to and inhibition of PP2A-B56, peaks in prometaphase when PP2A-B56 localization to kinetochores is highest. We demonstrate here that kinetochore targeting of Bod1 depends on the outer kinetochore protein Ndc80 and not PP2A-B56. Crucially, Bod1 depletion functionally affects Ndc80 phosphorylation at the N-terminal serine 55 (S55), as well as a number of other phosphorylation sites within the outer kinetochore, including Knl1 at serine 24 and 60 (S24, S60), and threonine T943 and T1155 (T943, T1155). Therefore, Ndc80 recruits a phosphatase inhibitor to kinetochores which directly feeds forward to regulate Ndc80, and Knl1 phosphorylation, including sites that mediate the attachment of microtubules to kinetochores.

Description: Shear TUrbulence Resuspension Mesocosm (STURM) tanks, with high instantaneous bottom shear stress and realistic water column mixing in a single system, allow realistic benthic-pelagic coupling studies with sediment resuspension. The 1 m3 tanks can be programmed to produce tidal or episodic sediment resuspension for extended time periods (e.g. 4 weeks), over muddy sediments with a variety of benthic organisms. A resuspension paddle produces uniform bottom shear stress across the sediment surface while gently mixing a 1 m deep overlying water column. The STURM tanks can be programmed to different magnitudes, frequencies, and durations of bottom shear stress (and thus resuspension) with proportional water column turbulence levels over a wide range of mixing settings for benthic-pelagic coupling experiments. Over ten STURM calibration settings, RMS turbulent velocity ranged from 0.26 to 4.52 cm s1, energy dissipation rate from 0.0016 to 2.65 cm2 s3, the average bottom shear stress from 0.0035 to 0.19 Pa, and the instantaneous maximum bottom shear stress from 0.07 to 1.7 Pa. We have performed four 4-week benthic-pelagic coupling ecosystem experiments with tidal resuspension and stepwise erosion experiments (both with and without infaunal bivalves), carried out experiments on oyster biodeposit resuspension, mimicked storms overlain on tidal resuspension, and studied the effects of varying frequency and duration of resuspension on sedimentary contaminant release. The large size of the tanks allows water quality and particle measurements using standard oceanographic instrumentation. The realistic scale and complexity of the contained ecosystems has revealed indirect feedbacks and responses that are not observable in smaller, less complex experimental systems.

Description: Reproducible climate reconstructions of the Common Era (1 CE to present) are key to placing industrial-era warming into the context of natural climatic variability. Here we present a community-sourced database of temperature-sensitive proxy records from the PAGES2k initiative. The database gathers 692 records from 648 locations, including all continental regions and major ocean basins. The records are from trees, ice, sediment, corals, speleothems, documentary evidence, and other archives. They range in length from 50 to 2000 years, with a median of 547 years, while temporal resolution ranges from biweekly to centennial. Nearly half of the proxy time series are significantly correlated with HadCRUT4.2 surface temperature over the period 1850–2014. Global temperature composites show a remarkable degree of coherence between high- and low-resolution archives, with broadly similar patterns across archive types, terrestrial versus marine locations, and screening criteria. The database is suited to investigations of global and regional temperature variability over the Common Era, and is shared in the Linked Paleo Data (LiPD) format, including serializations in Matlab, R and Python.

Description: Presented at the ICES Annual Science Conference, Gdańsk, Poland, 19–23 September 2011

Description: Coastal and marine spatial planning (CMSP) is a process for improving the management of coastal and marine resources in order to promote their sustainable development. Sustainability necessitates that decisions be made about existing and future spatial and temporal distributions of human uses (and non‐uses) of the coastal and marine environment. Such decisions require methods for making tradeoffs. We present the outlines of an economic methodology based upon models of spatially distributed regional economic impacts to characterize the social welfare effects of tradeoffs among alternative CMSP policies. We show how a regional computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the US northeast coastal economy could be used to assess changes in the spatial and temporal distribution of human uses and activities in the US Northeast Region. This work extends earlier efforts to develop a regional input‐ouput (IO) model of the Northeast Shelf LME and to link a regional IO model to linear models of a marine food web. The resulting CGE model could be used to analyze marginal changes in social welfare with respect to policy changes and to evaluate tradeoffs by estimating the socio‐economic net benefits of alternative scenarios. We present some examples of how the model could be used to simulate tradeoffs such as those involving the siting of ocean wind farms.

Description: This work was supported by the Woods Hole Sea Grant Program (Award No. NA10OAR4170083); the MIT Sea Grant College Program (NOAA Award No. NA10OAR4170086, Subaward No. 5710002974); the National Science Foundation (NSF Award No. OCE‐1114142); and the Johnson Endowment of the WHOI Marine Policy Center.

Description: Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2017. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here under a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license granted to WHOI. It is made available for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Coastal Management 45 (2017): 360-383, doi:10.1080/08920753.2017.1345607.

Description: Coastal barrier systems around the world are experiencing higher rates of flooding and shoreline erosion. Property owners on barriers have made significant financial investments in physical protections that shield their nearby properties from these hazards, constituting a type of adaptation to shoreline change. Factors that contribute to adaptation on Plum Island, a developed beach and dune system on the North Shore of Massachusetts, are investigated here. Plum Island experiences patterns of shoreline change that may be representative of many inlet-associated beaches, encompassing an equivocal and dynamically shifting mix of erosion and accretion. In the face of episodic floods and fleeting erosive events, and driven by a combination of strong northeast storms and cycles of erosion and accretion, the value of the average Plum Island residence increases by 34% for properties on the oceanfront where protection comprises a publicly constructed soft structure. Even in the face of state policies that ostensibly discourage physical protection as a means of adaptation, coastal communities face significant political and financial pressures to maintain existing protective structures or to allow contiguous groups of property owners to build new ones through collective action. These factors mitigate against adapting to shoreline change by retreating from the coast, thereby potentially increasing the adverse effects of coastal hazards.

Description: Support for this study was provided by NSF Grant Nos. OCE 1325430 and AGS 1518503 and NOAA Cooperative Agreement No. NA14OAR4170074.

Description: Presented at the ICES Annual Science Conference, Gdańsk, Poland, 19–23 September 2011

Description: Presentation to Environmental Business Council of New England, Inc., EBC Climate Change Program Series, Part Four: Adaptation and Resiliency Programs at Institutions, Boston, MA, June 23, 2017.

Description: Many US coastal communities have experienced decades of expanding population growth, in-volving the construction of private residences, businesses, and public infrastructures in near-coast areas. In the United States, counties directly on the shoreline account for more than 126 million people or 39 percent of the nation’s population. Coasts are marked by a concentration of not only population but also of wealth: the income per capita of US coastal counties is more than eight times that of inland counties. Coastal communities depend on coastal natural and human capital for businesses, livelihoods, and flows of market-based and nonmarket ecosystem services. In the face of these demographic trends, coastal communities and their citizens face increasingly urgent challenges concerning how they should respond to natural hazards. Residents and property owners immediately on the coast have become exposed increasingly to tidal flooding and other hazards arising from so-called “king tides” (perihelic-perigean spring tides), storm events, including surges, and shoreline change, especially erosion. These hazards are exacerbated further by rising sea levels due to climate change. Where manmade capital is perceived to be at risk from coastal hazards, humans have responded typically by replenishing beaches or by building hard structural protections, such as seawalls, to protect their communities and properties. Often, these solutions are only temporary or they may lead to external effects, such as accelerated erosion down-drift of structures, unexpected property damages when structures are overtopped or fail, or losses of environmental amenities due to unexpected and unintended shoreline changes. Citizens, coastal residents, businesses, environmentalists, and politicians alike point to factors contributing to “community resilience” as remedies to the problems of coastal hazards. The term has become a catchword, something that every person, thing, or system apparently needs to survive and flourish. Nevertheless, a lot of vagueness persists in both the extant literature and the vernacular about resilience and its related concept, vulnerability. NOAA’s National Ocean Service defines “coastal resilience” as the ability of a community to “bounce back” after experiencing a natural hazard. While the idea of “bouncing back” makes intuitive sense, nowhere in the NOS definition is there a description of how a community can be understood to have bounced back. The only general criterion is that a short-term hazard should not become a long-term, presumably more serious one. In other words, there is no explicit metric to which a community might refer in order to determine whether bouncing back has taken place. Further, the absence of such a metric begs the question of how one would know what factors contribute to resilience and to what degree. This presentation explores the issue of resilience in the context of shoreline change in coastal Massachusetts.

Description: NSF Award Nos. CNH-518503, GEO-0815875, OCE-1333826 (to VIMS); Northeast Regional Sea Grant Consortium Award No. 2014-R/P-NERR-14-1-REG

Description: This case study provides a description and evaluation of marine area governance and management in the Gulf of Maine. On the advice of the Oversight Committee, we began the study at a broad level by identifying marine resources, uses of the resources, existing management regimes, and conflicts among users of the resources. The results of these initial reviews are collected in the tables in Appendix A. The Oversight Committee also suggested that we develop a chronology of important events relating to marine area governance and management in the Gulf of Maine, which is included as Appendix B. As is clear from even a quick scan of the material in Appendix A, almost every conceivable use of the marine environment occurs in the Gulf of Maine at some scale. However, some of these uses are more problematic than others in terms of the governance and management problems they engender. Rather than take a broadbrush approach that might not have done justice to any of the region's many ocean resources and uses, we decided to focus the case study on one or more of its most difficult and consequential governance and management issues. The initial survey enabled us to focus in on a subset of resources, use conflicts, and governance issues, namely those associated mainly with marine fisheries governance and management. Several considerations support the argument for a focus on fisheries governance and management. The marine fisheries are a regional-scale resource and industry, due to the mobility of the fish stocks, the geographic distribution of the users of the resource, and the fact that governance institutions have been designed to have regionwide authority. Thus fisheries mismanagement has the potential to inflict widespread social detriment and significant economic losses. Indeed, the net cost of depleted groundfish stocks under the current management structure, relative to the condition of stocks in an optimally managed fishery, has been estimated at about $139 million annually, or just under one-fifth the landed value of the entire Gulf of Maine commercial catch. Other ocean resources with potentially regional impacts, such as offshore energy, are not being pursued in the Gulf of Maine region at levels that pose significant concerns. Consequently, non-fishery resource management problems in the Gulf of Maine are, for the most part, local in scale, of comparatively minor economic significance, and not unique to the region. There is no evidence, for example, of "system-wide degradation of marine environmental quality in the Gulf of Maine. . . . The Gulf as a whole remains relatively clean, although the deep central basins appear to be accumulating several pollutants, including PAHs and PCBs" (GOMCME 1994; see also Dow and Braasch 1996 and Gould, Clark, and Thurberg 1994). Given that most pollutants of concern are concentrated in inshore waters near urban areas and in the mouths of industrialized rivers, it is not at all clear that they could be dealt with more effectively or efficiently at the regional level. In sum, our focus on fisheries reflects our judgment that the greatest net benefits might be obtained from improvements in the governance and management of these marine resources within the Gulf of Maine region.

Description: This case study was produced for the purposes of the Committee on Marine Area Governance and Management of the National Research Council (NRC), Agreement No. DOT -3830-96-002.