Month: March 2021

Dr. Joe Pawlik is a Distinguished Professor of Marine Biology in the Department of Biology and Marine Biology at UNCW. He received his BS in 1982 from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and his PhD in Marine Biology in 1988 from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD.  He joined the Department of Biology and Marine Biology at UNCW in 1991, where he teaches undergraduate courses in Invertebrate Zoology and Biodiversity, teaches Introduction to Science as a Profession to graduate students, and directs a research program involving undergrad, MS and PhD students. Joe worked at the US National Science Foundation (NSF) as a Program Officer in the Biological Oceanography Program for 2 years beginning 2003. He and his students and collaborators have authored over 160 publications, primarily on the ecology of sponges on Caribbean coral reefs. Check out a list of his publications here.

James (Jim) Cloern is a senior scientist emeritus at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California. His research over four decades addresses comparative ecology and biogeochemistry of estuaries to understand how they respond as ecosystems to climatic-hydrologic variability and human disturbance. His team investigation of San Francisco Bay included studies of primary production, nutrient cycling, algal and zooplankton community dynamics, ecosystem metabolism and food web dynamics, disturbance by introduced species, ecosystem restoration, and past and projected future responses to a changing climate. His career achievements have been recognized with selection as Fellows of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO), and as recipient of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution B.H. Ketchum Award, Delta Science Program Brown-Nichols Achievement Award, ASLO Ruth Patrick Award, Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation Odum Lifetime Achievement Award, and Department of Interior's Distinguished Service Award. He is currently an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, a member of the Delta Stewardship Council's Independent Science Board, and editor-in-chief of Limnology and Oceanography Letters.

Mike Vardaro has worked with the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) since 2011; four years as a Project Scientist at Oregon State University focusing on designing, testing, and deploying the Endurance Array off the coast of Oregon and Washington, three years as the Data Manager at Rutgers, working with the Cyberinfrastructure (CI) team on monitoring and evaluating data to create quality-controlled data streams for the OOI user community, and currently as a Research Scientist at the University of Washington, working on the Regional Cabled Array. He is also a lecturer at San Jose State University. Prior to working with the OOI, he designed and deployed photographic and oceanographic instrumentation in the Gulf of Mexico, Northeastern Pacific, and Southeastern Atlantic oceans to study the links between surface productivity, carbon flux, and deep benthic invertebrate populations, and how such systems change over time. He has a BS in Biology from Georgetown University, an MS in Biological Oceanography from Texas A&M, and a Ph.D. in Marine Biology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Predicting changes in structure & function of ecosystems requires large-scale, long-term studies. We integrate kelp forest data from 469 sites/373 species spanning Alaska, USA, to Baja California, Mexico. Results revealed changes in community structure were most evident within the southern and north-central ecoregions, and forecast a poleward shift in the abundance of habitat-forming groups. All this was only possible with a sweeping display of international coordination and cooperation of a team of scientists and countless volunteers from 14 different organizations joining forces to document the northward migration of kelp forests due to warming waters. This is an excellent example of collaboration between researchers, communities, and civil society organizations in the USA and Mexico to understand how climate change will impact the kelp forest and therefore fisheries and coastal communities in the next 30 years.

About the speaker:

Rodrigo Beas-Luna is an Associate Professor at Facultad de Ciencias Marina, UABC. He is a marine ecologist-oceanographer, who combines field observation, lab work and quantitative tools to better understand the functioning of energy transfer among trophic levels and ecosystem responses to different environmental conditions.