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Welcome to Biological Oceanography

The goal of biological oceanography is to understand what controls the abundances, kinds, and temporal variation of organisms in the sea. Our research and teaching programs are oriented toward a mechanistic understanding of processes. To this end we employ a variety of approaches including field observations, laboratory experiments and theoretical models.

 

The School benefits from its location on the campus of a major research university.  Opportunities for collaboration, coursework, and use of state of the art facilities are available through the Departments of Biology, Microbiology, Genome Sciences, the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences and Friday Harbor Laboratories.

 

Research and teaching programs in biological oceanography at the University of Washington are oriented toward a mechanistic understanding of processes in the sea. The strengths of the graduate program are a core of modern summary courses ensuring an up-to-date overview of the discipline combined with a research program having the flexibility and resources to advance in virtually any direction. Each graduate student learns the basics of water-column and benthic approaches as they pertain to microbes and macroscopic organisms. On a campus offering 5,000 courses in 200 academic disciplines and with 3,500 faculty, it is possible to tailor graduate committees and more specialized course work precisely to a student's needs and interests. The nationally recognized Departments of Biology, Microbiology and the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences are typically utilized in this tailoring, but expertise is also drawn from other faculty, such as applied mathematicians, geophysicists, and chemical and electrical engineers.

Meet Our Faculty

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Areas of Research

Microbiology of extreme environments - The study of microbes in high pressure deep sea environments, physiology of survival and growth and high temperatures and in sea ice.

 

Phytoplankton Ecology - Physiology, genetic diversity and genomics of the oceans primary producers

 

Food web dynamics - Interactions between zooplankton, phytoplankton and protists, their distributions in time and space, connections between individual behavior and populations level demographics

Welcome to Chemical Oceanography

Chemical Oceanography is fundamentally interdisciplinary.  The chemistry of the ocean is closely tied to ocean circulation, climate, the plants and animals that live in the ocean, and the exchange of material with the atmosphere, cryosphere, continents, and mantle.  This diversity of influences on the chemistry of the ocean is represented by the research interests of the Chemical Oceanography faculty at the University of Washington, listed below, with links to the individual research groups.

Meet Our Faculty

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Areas of Research

Carbon Cycle

Many of our faculty and students are researching how carbon is distributed and exchanged between the oceans, atmosphere, biosphere and geosphere.  Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels influence Earth’s surface temperature and are an integral part of the carbon cycle.  All living things and the fossil fuels they can evolve into are comprised of carbon.  The ocean contains a large reservoir of carbon many times the size of the atmospheric reservoir that can substantially alter atmospheric CO2 levels. Faculty members involved with carbon cycle research include:
Al Devol, Steve Emerson, Dick Feely (NOAA-PMEL), Anitra Ingalls, Rick Keil, Jim Murray, Paul Quay, Jeff Richey, Chris Sabine (NOAA-PMEL), Julian Sachs

Paleoclimatology

Several of our faculty and students research Earth’s climate and how it has varied in the recent and more distant past.  Understanding the natural variability of the climate system is essential for determining when the current climate is outside its normal range.  Since thermometers, rain gauges, weather balloons, oceanographic research vessels, and satellites have only been used extensively for less than a century the only way to reconstruct climate is from ocean and lake sediment cores, ice cores, tree rings, coral and the like.  Most of these techniques involve chemical analyses of one type or another, a specialty of our department.  Accurate reconstructions of the “pre-instrumental” climate are necessary in order to test the complex mathematical models used to predict future climate changes.  Faculty members involved in paleoclimate research include: Anitra Ingalls, Julian Sachs.

 

Geochemistry of Rivers and Estuaries

The ultimate source of the chemical constituents of the sea is primarily from rivers that deliver their dissolved and particulate input through estuaries.  This is the location of the most intimate contact of the ocean with humans, and we have our own unique example of Puget Sound.  Faculty that work on these systems are:
Al Devol, Anitra Ingalls, Rick Keil, Jeff Richey, Julian Sachs, Mark Warner

 

 

Biogeochemistry

The source of most of the chemical changes in the sea is the flux of biologically produced organic matter from the euphotic zone.  Gas exchange at the air-water interface is the sink for anthropogenically produced greenhouse gases.  Faculty who study chemical and isotope tracers of these biological processes are:

Steve Emerson, Chris Sabine (NOAA-PMEL), Paul Quay, Mark Warner

 

Sediment Geochemistry

Chemical reactions in the ocean change dramatically and are facilitated by a unique set of microbes when the oxygen concentration is exhausted.  The most widespread example of this is in ocean sediments which become the most important sink for nitrate after organic matter diagenesis depletes oxygen.  Other examples are the oxygen minimum zones of the ocean and anoxic basins like the Black Sea.  Faculty that study anaerobic chemical reactions and processes that control organic matter preservation are:

Al Devol, Steve Emerson, Anitra Ingalls, Rick Keil, Jim Murray, Julian Sachs

 

Hydrothermal Systems & Chemistry

Chemical reactions at mid-ocean ridge spreading centers that bisect all ocean basins involve unique reactions that greatly influence ocean chemical mass balance and provide a host for unique biological systems.  Faculty that study these processes are:

Marv Lilley, Joe Resing (NOAA-PMEL)

 

A more detailed description of the research interests of our faculty is contained in the Power Point presentation you can download here: Chemical Oceanography Power Point Presentation.

Welcome to Marine Geology and Geophysics

The Marine Geology and Geophysics program at the University of Washington focuses on two primary areas of education and research.

 

Mid-Ocean Ridge Processes involves the examination of the flow of energy and materials from the Earth's interior, through the ocean crust and its associated hydrothermal systems, and into the deep sea. The School of Oceanography's proximity to the Juan de Fuca/Gorda Ridge system and Cascadia subduction zone provides ready access to an ideal natural laboratory for study of the active components of a geological plate. This local focus is complemented by additional work along the global mid-ocean ridge.

Marine Sediment Dynamics concerns the genesis, transport and accumulation of particulate material in the marine environment. Individual faculty members also pursue a number of research themes outside these two focus areas. Our approach to graduate student education builds on a solid academic foundation in the fundamentals of transport phenomena, fluid and continuum mechanics, geochemistry, and data analysis as a basis for understanding the geological processes within the marine environment.

Meet Our Faculty

Welcome to Physical Oceanography

Physical oceanography focuses on describing and understanding the evolving patterns of ocean circulation and fluid motion, along with the distribution of its properties such as temperature, salinity and the concentration of dissolved chemical elements and gases. The ocean as a dynamic fluid is studied at a wide range of spatial scales, from the centimeter scales relevant to turbulent microstructure through the many thousand kilometer scales of the ocean gyres and global overturning circulation. Approaches include theory, direct observation, and computer simulation. Our research frequently takes place in the context of important multidisciplinary issues including the dynamics and predictability of global climate and the sustainability of human use in coastal and estuarine regions.

 

The diversity of the program in physical oceanography is greatly increased by numerous joint and affiliate positions with two world-class research laboratories, the University's Applied Physics Laboratory and with the nearby NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, where many of our graduate students choose to do their research.

Meet Our Faculty

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Areas of Student Research

Acoustical Oceanography - Research on the propagation and scattering of sound in the ocean spans a wide range of the acoustic wave frequency spectrum and uses approaches drawn from theory, numerical modeling and observations.

 

The Ocean in Climate and Circulation - The planetary-scale ocean circulation is the keystone of physical, chemical and biological oceanography and an important part of the Earth's climate system.

 

Coastal and Estuarine Processes - Polluted runoff and sewage, overfishing, and even global climate change, are affecting these regions far more rapidly and extensively than the deep sea, threatening marine ecosystems, human health, and sustainable fisheries.

 

Geophysical Fluid Dynamics - Geophysical fluid dynamics is the study of fluid motion on a rotating planet.

 

Polar Oceanography - Oceanographers in the APL's Polar Science Center study the physical mechanisms responsible for the distribution of sea ice and polar ice sheets, the circulation of high-latitude oceans, and the interactions between the atmosphere, ocean and cryosphere that play an important role in regulating Earth's climate.

 

Tropical Oceanography - The tropical oceans illustrate the effects of close coupling with the atmosphere on many timescales.

 

Waves, Turbulence and Mixing - Ocean processes occur on a huge range of spatial scales, from the global circulation many megameters in size, to the scales of millimeters to centimeters where molecular diffusion and viscosity act.