Puget Sound Oceanography

WINTER TERM 2009
Salish bathymetry
fish south sound

OCN 506C (Graduate) & 497C (Undergrad Honors), 3 Credits

Room: OSB 425 (Ocean Sciences Building: Map)

Schedule: MWF 11:30-12:20

Instructors:

Course Description

This class is intended for graduate students from any scientific discipline. We will study the physical-biological coupling in a wide range of estuarine systems from around the world, with Puget Sound as a primary example.

We focus on important estuarine processes and their consequences:

  • Effects of circulation and mixing on residence time and patterns of phytoplankton and zooplankton
  • Development of hypoxia and its effects on biology
  • Edges: the ETM (Estuarine Turbidity Maximum) and the intertidal zone
  • Harmful algal blooms
  • Effects of increasing urbanization and climate change

The course will consist of lectures, student-led discussions of research papers, and occasional guests. Students will write a number of short response essays based on the reading, and a longer paper on a topic of their choice. Students will give a short presentation on their final paper in the last week. There will be no final exam.

DRAFT SYLLABUS:

  1. Residence time (tides, circulation, turbulent mixing, exchange flow)
  2. Stratification
  3. Eutrophication and Hypoxia
  4. Algal blooms, harmful and essential
  5. The ETM and the intertidal zone
  6. Zooplankton patterns and processes
  7. History: geological processes, human development in the last 150 years
  8. Urbanization, human inputs, climate change
  9. Student presentations

LINKS:

PDF of Richard Strickland's Fertile Fjord: http://www.wsg.washington.edu/communications/online/fjord/index.html

Richard Strickland's website

Oceanography of Puget Sound, Fall 2006, Keil & Strickland, OCN 422

NOAA PMEL Publications: http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/publications/search_get_ntis_list.php

11/12/08 Under construction