Research News
Recent News
Dante Canil elected Fellow Royal Society of Canada
SEOS Professor Dante Canil was recently recognized for excellence in research by the Royal Society of Canada. As noted on the Royal Society web site "Dante Canil is an international leader in the study of the Earth's mantle. He has pioneered innovative research in the Earth Sciences that has revolutionized our current understanding of kimberlites, craton formation, mantle oxidation and diamonds. He is the author of numerous highly-cited research articles together with a seminal chapter in Treatise in Geochemistry." Dante will be officially inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society at the November Induction and Awards Ceremony being held in Ottawa. What a great achievement! Way to go Dante.
Andrew Weaver to Recieve Huntsman Award
SEOS Professor Andrew Weaver is to be honoured by Bedford Institute of Oceanography with the Huntsman Award to recognize excellence of research and outstanding contributions to marine sciences. The citation highlights "Dr. Andrew J. Weaver (FRSC) is an international leader in ocean and climate modelling and analysis and, in particular, is a foremost expert on the role of the ocean in climate variability and change. Dr. Weaver's research at the University of Victoria involves multiple aspects of ocean, climate, and paleoclimate modeling and analysis. His research group developed an Earth System Climate Model referred to internationally as the University of Victoria climate model". Congratulations Andrew!
Laurence Coogan, Jody Klymak, and David Nelles recognized by UVic Faculty of Science
SEOS Associate Professor Laurence Coogan has been chosen for the 2011 Faculty of Science Award for Teaching Excellence. SEOS (and Physics and Astronomy) Assistant Professor Jody Klymak will receive the faculty's Award for Research Excellence. David Nelles received recognition for his service to the university with the Faculty's Service Excellence Award. Congratulations on these awards!
Previous News
SEOS/Biology Scientists take lead in acquiring new west coast research vessel
SEOS and Biology Professors Kim Juniper and John Dower were lead PIs on a proposal to improve the ability of west coast academics to work in the ocean. Funded by the Candian Foundation for Innovation and the BC Knowledge Development Fund, UVic will retrofit a 33 m vessel donated by the Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The ship will be capable of working in coastal waters, and have a full suite of scientific instrumentation. Work in retrofitting the vessel should begin Summer 2011.
BC Year of Science 2010-2011: UVic Science Activity of the Month and 5 Minutes with a Scientist
The BC Ministry of Advanced Education and Labour Market Development have declared October 2010 to June 2011 the "BC Year of Science". They hope to, among other thing, "encourage young people to pursue a better education in science today" to prepare them for the jobs of tomorrow. They hope that the BC Year of Science will be an opportunity to discover the fun and excitement of science. To this end the Faculty of Science at UVic are developing monthly science activities for BC youth as well as short interviews with UVic scientists. The October entries featuring SEOS faculty Stephen Johnston and a Science to Understand our Land activity are now posted on the Faculty of Science website http://web.uvic.ca/sciweb/.Volcanic ash fuels unprecedented plankton bloom
Featured on CBC's Quirks and Quarks Sat, Oct 16, 2010
In August 2008, ash from the explosive eruption of Kasatochi Volcano in the Aleutian Islands not only snarled air travel in the region, it also fuelled a plankton bloom of unprecedented scale in the North Pacific. Oceanographers had the opportunity to directly observe this event when a Fisheries and Oceans Canada research cruise was in the area at the time of the bloom. In a recent paper in Geophysical Research Letters, a team of researchers, including SEOS faculty Roberta Hamme and Laurence Coogan, adjunct faculty Bill Crawford from Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and graduate students Karina Giesbrecht and Damian Grundle, report that ash from the eruption provided iron to the ocean that plankton needed to grow. Approximately 20% of the world's oceans, including the North Pacific off our coast, have less iron than plankton need to grow effectively. Some have suggested that climate change could be combatted by purposefully fertilizing these regions with iron to cause the plankton to take up carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. However, the carbon uptake from this event was small despite a large fertilized area at an optimum time of year, showing that iron fertilization would need to occur on a truly gigantic scale to impact our climate. For more information, see the recent article in the Globe and Mail and our summary for the public.
Reporting back from EOS 400 Field School
Whereas last year's EOS 400 class battled the heat, this year's trip was characterized by below average temperatures from the Badlands of Drumheller, east of Calgary, west all the way to Whistler Peak. Arriving in the Rockies, we were surprised to see that the mountain peaks were already dusted with fresh snow. Little did we realize that we would end up summiting Wilcox Pass in a blizzard (at times it felt more like a Himalayan climbing expedition). We were joined this year by Dr. Stefano Mazzoli of the University of Napoli, an expert on fold and thrust belts and hence a great help to us all in our efforts to understand the structure of the Rocky Mountains. As always, our students provided me with new perspectives on a mountain system that continues to inspire through its beauty and its geology.
Two SEOS grad students receive Level 1 Nortek awards
Mei Sato and Jeannette Bedard each received student awards from Nortek USA to obtain specialized acoustic instrumentation to study bio/physical interactions in the Strait of Georgia. Jeannette deployed instruments to study how flow and turbulence affect the habitat of exotic glass sponge reefs in the lee of underwater obstacles. Mei is studying the effect of migrating zoo-plankton on mixing in the Strait, and mounted acoustic turbulence instruments in the water column to capture this elusive source of turbulence.
Prof. Adam Monahan receives 2009 CMOS President's Prize
SEOS Professor Adam Monahan was recently recognized for "a recent paper or book of special merit in the fields of meteorology or oceanography" for his work on "developing a physical understanding of the probability distribution of surface winds" by the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society at their 2010 congress in Ottawa. Here, Adam (right) is receiving his award from the President of CMOS and SEOS adjunct professor Bill Crawford (DFO/IOS).
SEOS Professors and Adjuncts Honoured
Biology/SEOS Professor Verena Tunnicliffe was recently renewed for her Tier-1 Canada Research Chair in Deep Ocean Research to continue her pioneering research in deep ocean ecosystems. Prof. Tunnicliffe's recognition comes not only from her outstanding research, but because of her scientific leadership in Canada, and her role in mentoring students and young scientists. Congratulations Verena!
SEOS is also pleased to announce that Adjunct Professor Robie MacDonald (Institute of Ocean Science, Sidney B.C.), and Adjunct Professor Paul Hoffman (Emiritus Harvard) were both elected fellows of the American Geophysical Union.
Oxygen induced nuclear reactor in the Archean?
All complex life on Earth is dependent on oxygen in the atmosphere. This oxygen-rich atmosphere is produced, and maintained, by oxygen-producing photosynthetic plants. The rock record tell us that oxygen started building up in the atmosphere about half way through our planets life (~2.5 billion years ago). What impacts did this have on Earth's environment? In a recent paper in GSA Today, Jay Cullen and Laurence Coogan suggest that it may have induced the formation of natural fission reactors. Nowadays to get uranium to undergo nuclear fission, for example in power stations, it is artificially 'enriched' but 2.5 billion years ago there was sufficient fissile uranium-235 that it would have undergone spontaneous nuclear fission if more than one cubic metre of uranium was concentrated in a small area. Because of the way uranium behaves, the increase in atmospheric oxygen about 2.5 billion years ago would have led to uranium being dissolved out of rocks and forming concentrated uranium deposits. Once more than about one cubic metre of uranium was concentrated in a given place it would have formed a natural fission reactor contaminating the environment with hazardous by-products.
Graduate student Brendan Rideout honoured by Canadian Acoustical Association
At the annual Canadian Acoustical Association (CAA) conference, held in Niagara-on-the-Lake this past October, SEOS M.Sc. candidate Brendan Rideout was selected to receive two awards relating to his work on underwater acoustics. These awards were the "Fessenden Student Prize in Underwater Acoustics" and a "Student Presentation Award". The Fessenden Prize is awarded annually to a student studying underwater acoustics at a Canadian graduate school based on the quality and originality of their research proposal. Student Presentation Awards are given out each year at the CAA conference to those three students judged to have given the best student presentations (this year, out of ~50 presentations) at the conference. Brendan's work involves developing algorithms for determining the location (and localization uncertainty) of a calling underwater Pacific Walrus based on the relative arrival times of it's calls at a series of underwater sound recorders.
Prof. Ross Chapman Elected Fellow of IEEE
SEOS professor Ross Chapman was recently elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for his contributions to geoacoustic characterization of ocean bottom environments. Dr. Chapman's research in the development and application of methods for estimating parameters of geoacoustic models from experimental data has stimulated work in this research field in naval, academic and applied research laboratories nationally and internationally. He has published over 80 refereed papers on ocean acoustic propagation and geoacoustic inversion, mostly in the IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering and the Acoustical Society of America, and has presented over 125 papers at conferences (~30 invited). Currently he is the leader of the ocean bottom interaction group in the US Office of Naval Research (ONR) program in shallow water acoustics.
A natural setting to look at ocean acidification - Mussels at a low-pH hydrothermal vent.
The vent mussel
Did changing ocean chemistry impact plankton biomineralization?
Did changes in submarine volcanism ~100 Myrs ago lead to changes in ocean chemistry that, in-turn, allow to evolution of Acantharians - microzooplankton that make their shells out of SrSO4 (celestite)? That's the hypothesis that Laurence Coogan proposes in a paper just published in the journal Geochemisty Geophysics Geosystems. Based on differences in the composition of oceanic crust that reacted with seawater at different times in the past he suggests that the Sr-content of seawater 100 Myrs ago was ~5 times higher than in modern seawater (~40 ppm versus 8 ppm). The higher amount of Sr in the ocean may have allowed some zooplankton that secreted SiO2 skeletons to switch to secreting SrSO4 skeletons.
Students On Ice: Exploring the Antarctic
Maeva Gauthier, a masters candidate in SEOS, was part of the first Antarctic University Expedition in February 2009. The group of 71 international students and 17 scientists, polar experts, educators and expedition team members travelled south to the World's Greatest Classroom - Antarctica! This year's expedition has been endorsed by the International Polar Year Joint Committee as an official event of the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2009. They learned about glaciology, impact climate change on biological and physical processes, impact of tourism in Antarctica, the exploration, scientific and political history, etc. To learn more about the expedition: http://studentsonice.com/U09/AUE-follow-expedition.html
Origin of an Orogen: Where does BC come from?
This week, the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences will release a new compilation of information on the formation of the Cordillera. The author is Stephen Johnston, faculty member in SEOS. Stephen recalls that the request for this review was a surprise as he believed his work to be a "rather solitary, even quixotic quest". However, while writing the paper, he had to reconcile conflicting theories and fundamentally different interpretations of the origins of the Cordillera that arose from geological data and paleomagnetic data. Did we mostly form where we are today - or did much of the Cordillera ribbon move in from a distant location in a prolonged collision in the Mesozoic?
As he wrote the review, Stephen found his own ideas shifting. Geological data derives from studies over the past two hundred years. Interpretations indicate most of BC has been right where it is today for 200 million years. But the "paleomagnetic" data places all of BC some 2000 to 3000 km to the south as recently as 70 million years ago. It was while compiling the accumulated geological data that he realized that much of it dates from before the advent of plate tectonics theory; in fact, it is more easily explained if all of BC was far removed from the North American continent until relatively recently (in geological terms).
"It became clear to me that part of the problem is simply one of scientific inertia ... evidence of ties to North America are being interpreted that way because they have always been interpreted that way. I guess I just didn't realize how little time has elapsed since the plate tectonic revolution shook up the Earth Sciences. It now seems clear to me that we haven't yet shaken off interpretations that pre-date plate tectonics, and it surprises me to no end just how difficult it is to break free of long held presuppositions and prejudices." So maybe a tropical climate is in the bones of our Province....
See Johnston, S. T. 2008 The Cordilleran Ribbon Continent of North America. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Volume 36.
Groundwater Research
So what can you do with a degree from the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences? Sylvia Kenny wanted to learn more about groundwater and sought a career in helping preserve our water systems. Through the SEOS program and interactions with professors like Kevin Telmer and government scientists like Mike Wei at the BC Ministry of the Environment she reached her goal. In Sylvia's words:
"When I transferred as a mature student to Earth Sciences at UVic I didn't know what to expect. I knew that a BSc in geology was needed to reach my goal of being a hydrogeologist (working with aquifers and water wells); the Geotech program looked interesting and I could stay in my home town. In the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, I found a dedicated group of teachers, hard-working students, and challenging courses. Through the Co-operative Education program and an Honours Thesis project, I was able to work in the field developing contacts and becoming involved in hydrogeology studies and projects in the local community.
I worked on trying to understand why some water wells were productive and others nearby were not. If we could discover the reason, then we can improve access to good quality water for the region. I combined field work (well testing) with satellite imagery to detect fault traces (lineaments) to investigate trends in groundwater flow. I found that water yield from wells decreased at increasing distances from lineament intersections. Ultimately, I presented these results to the International Association of Hydrogeologists.
Now, I work for with the Ministry of Environment developing my passion: I help maintain a network of groundwater observation wells around Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands. I also study aquifers to understand better how to protect groundwater resources."
Understanding the Effect of Climate Change on Winds
Winds in the atmosphere vary on many spatial scales, from metres to thousands of kilometers. Atmospheric scientists use statistical tools to isolate variability on each spatial scale. This approach is powerful for describing variability, but the connection of the statistics to the underlying dynamical processes is problematic. SEOS faculty member Adam Monahan is collaborating with John Fyfe of the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (UVic) to consider the problem of the connection between statistics and dynamics of global-scale wind variability by modelling the jet stream as a simple shape that can change its position, width, and strength. The jet stream model is simple enough that mathematical formulae for the statistical features in terms of jet properties can be computed by hand. This approach - first specifying jet properties, and then computing the statistics - is in contrast to the standard approach in which statistical analyses of observations are performed first and then interpreted in terms of physical processes. This research has demonstrated that the connection between the physical processes and their statistical description is not as simple as had been thought - but that with care, these connections can be teased out.
Ocean Acoustics and Large-Amplitude Waves
What interesting research on ocean acoustics can you do with seven ships, 62 moorings, aircraft overflights, satellite coverage, a fleet of ten oceanographic gliders, data-assimilating numerical modeling, real-time data communication from shipboard experiments, and dozens of principal investigators? An article in the December 2007 issue of Oceanography will tell you about a major ocean experiment involving SEOS Professor, Ross Chapman, to understand subsea sound propagation. The major influence on sound propagation in shallow water arises from the interaction with the ocean bottom. Recent work (much funded by the Office of Naval Research, or ONR) examines the physics of the interaction to develop methods to infer the parameters of sea bed models that affect sound propagation. These approaches extract information about the sea bottom from measurements of the acoustic field interacting with the seafloor. However, in shallow water, a complex interplay among winds, rivers, tides, and local bathymetry drives a nonstationary, shelfbreak front and a nonlinear internal wave field. Sound propagation becomes similarly complex. The key question: what influence do the oceanographic features in the water have on our methods to estimate properties of the sea bed?
In summer 2006, ONR sponsored a multi-disciplinary, multi-institution, multi-national experiment off the coast of New Jersey, designated "Shallow Water '06" (SW06). The experiment had three components corresponding to the major research and technology thrusts: i) in acoustics, LEAR (for Littoral Environmental Acoustics Research); ii) in physical oceanography, NLIWI (the Non Linear Internal Waves Initiative); and iii) in vehicles, AWACS (for Acoustic Wide Area Coverage for Surveillance). The experiment lasted two months with a major coordination effort for all the aspects. Two of the logistical components merit special attention due to their sheer size and novelty: (1) mooring layout, construction, deployment, and recovery, and (2) real-time data and experiment-status communications via the SW06 Web site.
Since the data were collected in August 2006, Chapman's group has examined acoustic data from sites that were carefully sampled by other methods to determine the ground truth information about the sea bed. Preliminary results revealed a new problem in their methods for inverting the acoustic data. The complex oceanography near the shelf break appears to generate significant variation in the sound speed profile in the water over the duration of the measurements. Their goal is to figure out how to account for the varying sound speed in the inversion methods.
Arctic Geochemistry
Two UVic Scientists have recently returned from an Arctic cruise that measured trace metal concentrations in the Canada Basin. SEOS professor, Dr. Jay Cullen and his MSc student, Tim Giesbrecht, collected sea water samples from the continental shelf into the Canada Basin. Cullen's study focuses on iron, a nutrient that limits phytoplankton growth when in low concentrations. Phytoplankton are primary producers that use carbon dioxide via photosynthesis. Thus, growth of phytoplankton serves to reduce atmospheric CO2. Changes in the phytoplankton population due to nutrients such as iron affects not only the oceanic food web, but also the biological carbon dioxide sink.
Accurate measurements of iron are difficult because it occurs in such low concentrations in seawater. "It's only been recently that we have a handle on how to measure iron", notes Cullen. The UVic study will attempt to quantify the three-dimensional iron distribution in the Arctic as well as identifying dominant sources for the element. Each source has a different chemical signature, which can be identified through measurements of a suite of elements such as metals. Tim Giesbrecht's work focusses on aluminum measurements, which track inputs of iron from terrestrial sources. Giesbrecht will use a new "sequential-injection analysis system" in his work. This new technology promises to reduce dramatically the volume of samples needed.
Understanding and monitoring the climate and biology of the Arctic is particularly important due to projected effects of anthropogenic climate change at high latitudes. One such effect is a reduction in the volume of sea ice in summer months. Primary productivity in the Arctic tends to be highest in the summer at the ice edge. This past September saw the most pronounced summer minimum in sea ice in the instrumental record, coinciding with the UVic team's research cruise. "It was definitely surprising to see the lack of ice," said Giesbrecht of the unusual conditions. "We know that the impact of ice on the way the ocean works will diminish," says Cullen, "the question is what kind of ocean will it be as it becomes more and more ice free?" Cullen and Giesbrecht's work will provide a dataset that will serve both as a tool to better understand the biogeochemistry of the Arctic Ocean and as a valuable reference point to help track changes in polar ecosystems in the light of climate change.
Drilling Deep for Ocean History
For decades, scientists have known that, during the last ice age, atmospheric CO2 concentrations were about 30% lower than levels at the start of the Industrial Revolution. However, it has proven difficult to pin down exactly where that CO2 - missing from the ice age atmosphere - was stored. In a paper just published in Nature, SEOS faculty member Tom Pedersen and his PhD student Eric Galbraith showed, for the first time, that a big part of the explanation lay in the deep sea's ability to store CO2 effectively. By making many geochemical measurements of marine sediments recovered from the deep subarctic Pacific, Galbraith, Pedersen and coauthors were able to show conclusively that, during the peak of the last ice age, the deep ocean contained more CO2 than it does today. What's more, they show that this CO2 was released during a surprisingly rapid change in ocean circulation that punctuated the gradual warming of the earth, at the end of the ice age. At the same time, an abrupt circulation change also occurred in the North Atlantic Ocean. These results help resolve the long-standing mystery of ice age CO2 storage, while pointing to unexpected new aspects of the oceanic response to climate change.
see Galbraith et al. 200.7 Carbon dioxide release from the North Pacific abyss during the last deglaciation. Nature 449, 890-893.
Measuring biology productivity in the Arctic
Diana Varela is one of three SEOS faculty members involved in studies for the International Polar Year (IPY). In July, Diana and grad student Ian Wrohan boarded the icebreaker CCS Louis St. Laurent and traveled from Dartmouth to Kugluktuk where Ian continued to the Beaufort Sea. As part of the Canada 3 Oceans team lead by Eddy Carmack at IOS in Sidney, Diana and Ian are studying primary production in a variety of Arctic habitats. They sampled water at 30 stations and ran on-board experiments doing nutrient additions to phytoplankton cultures. This approach allows them to determine total, new and regenerated primary production along the Northwest Passage. In a longer term goal, they expect to determine the controls on this production and how it may be altered in a changing Arctic. The team's work was featured on the CBS evening news last August.
SEOS scientist awarded 2007 Mineralogical Association of Canada Young Scientist award.
Laurence Coogan, SEOS faculty member, has made some remarkable advances determining the cooling rate of mid ocean ridges. New oceanic crust crystallizes from magma at ~1200 degrees C; during cooling, it drivies extensive seawater circulation through the earth's crust below the ocean. Laurence designed methods to determine the cooling rate of pieces of the oceanic crust (such as that exposed in the Oman ophiolite) and thus determine the distribution and extent of seawater circulation within the crust. Field research includes ancient ocean crust such as that exposed in the ophiolites of Oman. For his novel work, Laurence received the 2007 Mineralogical Association of Canada Young Scientist award.
