Cool term project idea: Stella Architect model

So, I finished teaching for the first time: Biological and Chemical Oceanography. I taught the chemistry portion, while Dr. Matt Ajemian taught the biology portion. Overall, what a ride! I think in the end most students walked away with a decent understanding of Chemical Oceanography, but it was certainly a struggle condensing it to a half-semester, especially since I taught for a 3-hour block every other Monday (its nice to have my weekends back, BTW).

I certainly learned a lot and made a ton of mistakes, but I did get some nice feedback from a few students regarding our term assignment, which was to make a box model in a program called Stella Architect. The inspiration came from a graduate level class that I took from Dr. Philippe Van Cappellen at Georgia Tech, Global Biogeochemical Cycles. It was one of my favorite activities during my tenure as a grad student, and I created a global model of the arsenic cycle. I thought it turned out pretty darn well... Anyways, check the last page of the syllabus for the assignment for the students this past semester. The students were to create a box model to simulate some aspect of chemistry, biology, or both as related to their research. The students are able to purchase a semester-long license to Stella for about $60.

We had some really great topics, including:

• Degradation of PAHs in marine sediments
• Carbon budget of a karst blue hole
• Brevetoxin impacts on loggerhead sea turtles
• Iron citrus fertilizer: a possible marine pollutant?
• Predicting anthropogenic impacts to leatherback sea turtles
• Shells: what are they good for? (Ocean acidification / shellfish behavior coupling)
• Trophic transfer of microcystins to a top predator in the Indian River Lagoon
• Larval dispersal of Niphates erecta (a marine sponge) in the Florida Keys
• Modeling the nitrogen cycle in a closed aquaculture system
• Modeling the effects of ocean acidification on marine bivalves
• Indian River Lagoon water quality and prospective shellfish restoration
• Benthopelagic coupling and transport of organic matter to the benthos by marine sponges
• Upper trophic level biomass transfer in the IRL focusing on perturbations to bull shark populations
• Lemon shark physiology and energetics
• Oxygen production and consumption modeling in an aquaculture pond

Here is the sponge larvae transfer model:

Here is the HAB toxin model, simulating a pulse of Microcystin toxins from Lake Okeechobee into the Indian River Lagoon, followed by uptake by fish and sharks:

Here is the marine bivalves/ocean acidification model:

Here is an example of the ocean acidification model. The student simulated the transfer of carbonate ions.

Pretty neat stuff! Please contact me if you are interested in more details of how we implemented this project.

Present at our Goldschmidt2020 Session!

Hi all! New blog up and running!

I'd like to advertise for our session at the Goldschmidt2020 Geochemistry Conference in Honolulu in June 2020. We are hosting a really unique and timely session titled "Subaqueous Soils or Sediments? The Intersection of Pedology and Sediment Geochemistry".  We have noticed a lot of unrealized overlap (but also duplication of efforts) between soil scientists and the marine sediment geochemistry communities. In hoping to bring these potential synergies to light, I've teamed up with Dr. Todd Osborne at the Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience at the University of Florida to host this unique session. Please consider submitting an abstract (Session 10k) by 11:59 pm on Valentine's Day, February 14, 2020. Consider this a way out of your other official duties!!  :)

Our colleague Dr. Rex Ellis of the St. John's River Water Management District, a real driving force of the sub-aqueous soil science movement, oversees the processing of a submerged core at a subs-aqueous soil mapping workshop at the UF Whitney Lab in Fall of 2020.

Subaqueous Soils or Sediments? The Intersection of Pedology and Sediment Geochemistry

The advent of modern soil science almost a century ago brought with it a focus on characterizing soil ecosystem services. Pedologists have recently expanded efforts to characterize submerged soils due to their importance in governing ecosystem health. Limnologists and oceanographers, however, have studied near-surface coastal sediment diagenetic processes for decades. Despite different toolkits and vocabularies, both communities ultimately seek to protect human and ecosystem well-being. Pedologists have translated their traditional techniques of holistically classifying sediments over multi-meter depth scales and relating to landscape processes, while limnologists and oceanographers consider the solid phase and pore water composition to be predictable from the deposition of organic carbon and minerals and overlying water conditions. Limnologists and oceanographers typically focus on understanding fundamental chemical and biological processes that control carbon and nutrient budgets and fluxes over various time and space scales, often with a more applied focus such as climate or water quality. On the other hand, pedologists seek to develop “interpretations”of each subaqueous soil type, for example: blue carbon storage, benthic habitat suitability, potential environmental effects from dredging (e.g. sulfidization and acidification), or potential marine architecture corrosion. We invite members of either community to present new tools to characterize these environments (i.e. sampling/analyses, data treatment/processing, modeling or characterization), new geochemical or biological results from coastal, estuarine, or freshwater submerged or wetland environments that showcase these tools, or any big-picture perspectives that may foster open dialogue and more fluid collaborations between our communities in the future.