Urban Coast Institute Director Tony MacDonald was the featured guest on the March 31 Monmouth Weekly podcast, hosted by Monmouth University President Patrick Leahy and Specialist Professor Matt Harmon.
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A panel of leading voices in marine science and policy will convene at Monmouth University on April 13 for a conversation on where the nation is succeeding and falling short in its efforts to catalyze innovation and action to address climate change’s impacts to our oceans, and how oceans can help to mitigate those impacts.
Members of the public are welcome to attend the 16th Annual Future of the Ocean Symposium, beginning at 4 p.m. at the Great Hall Auditorium. The event, hosted by the Monmouth University Urban Coast Institute (UCI), is free to attend and no registration is required.
Speakers will include Richard Spinrad, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) administrator; Margaret Leinen, Scripps Institution of Oceanography director; Charlotte Hudson, Lenfest Ocean Program director; Richard Murray, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution deputy director and vice president for science and engineering; and Tashiana Osborne, climate change advisor, U.S. Agency for International Development via an American Association for the Advancement of Science Science & Technology Policy Fellowship. The panel will be moderated by Emmy and Peabody Award-winning journalist and PBS host Jack Ford.
The world’s oceans are under enormous stress from climate change, having absorbed an estimated 90 percent of all of the excess heat from global warming and nearly one-third of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities. As a result, scientists have observed significant changes taking place in marine environments including warming waters, ocean acidification, shifts in marine life habitats, retreating sea ice extents and an accompanying rise in sea levels. The symposium comes days after the Biden Administration released a first-ever, whole-of-government Ocean Climate Action Plan.
“While the ocean has borne an outsized share of the brunt of climate change, we are only beginning to recognize its potential as part of the solution,” UCI Director Tony MacDonald said. “For example, the greening of ports and shipping, a continued shift to renewable energy sources, and the restoration of submerged vegetation in our estuaries can all play a part in lowering CO2 levels. These actions also hold the promise for propelling new blue economy industries that create jobs, improve coastal resilience, and advance scientific knowledge of our ocean.”
Immediately following the symposium at 6 p.m., the UCI will host its Champion of the Ocean Awards reception, also in the Great Hall. This year’s honorees as National Champion of the Ocean will be Spinrad and Leinen, and State Coastal and Ocean Leadership awards will be presented to New Jersey State Sen. Bob Smith and American Littoral Society Executive Director Tim Dillingham. Tickets are required to attend the reception, with proceeds supporting the UCI.
The awards were established in 2005 to honor individuals who have undertaken actions and demonstrated sustained leadership that ensures coasts and oceans are clean, safe, sustainably managed, and preserved for the benefit and enjoyment of future generations. Previous honorees include ocean explorer Robert Ballard, marine biologist and explorer Sylvia Earle, ocean scientist and advocate Jean-Michael Cousteau, and former CIA Director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.
This event is made possible thanks to the generosity of the Leslie Hitchner Family. For more information, email uci@monmouth.edu or visit the event website.
Jay Odell, a marine science and policy expert with over 30 years of experience working to advance sustainable fisheries and ocean health, has joined the Urban Coast Institute (UCI) as a fisheries and ocean conservation fellow. In this role, Odell will conduct policy research on climate change impacts to ocean ecosystems and fisheries management systems and will engage government agencies and ocean-dependent user groups.
Odell previously worked as a collaborator with the UCI to help advance the first-ever Regional Ocean Action Plan in the Mid-Atlantic. He and UCI Director Tony MacDonald also co-led the team that created and launched the Mid-Atlantic Ocean Data Portal in 2010. The Portal, which is available to the public, includes over 6,000 interactive maps showing offshore wind areas and infrastructure, shipping vessel traffic patterns, marine life distributions, commercial fishing grounds and more. Today, UCI Communications Director Karl Vilacoba manages the Portal project team on behalf of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean (MARCO). Odell will join the Portal team to improve data related to commercial and recreational fishing activity and marine life in the region.
Odell most recently worked at The Nature Conservancy, where he served in various positions over the course of 20 years leading large-scale habitat restoration, marine spatial planning, and marine conservation programs at state, regional and national scales. He previously spent 13 years with the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife on work including stock assessment, harvest management, and leading co-management activity with Treaty Tribes to develop and implement fishery management plans.
The UCI honored Odell and representatives of the Garden State Seafood Association and Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council with Champion of the Ocean awards in 2015 for their roles in the designation of the 38,0000-square-mile Frank R. Lautenberg Deep-Sea Coral Protection Area. He will be focused on supporting new partnerships to achieve similar ‘win-win’ ocean management solutions in his new role with the UCI.
“We can use the same general problem-solving approach to address several different types of urgent ocean conservation challenges – habitat conservation, bycatch reduction, and accommodation of newer ocean uses like offshore wind power, to name a few,” Odell said. “When we gather ocean users and managers in review and open dialogue around trusted, shared information, good things tend to happen. The UCI is well-positioned to serve as an ocean solutions lab that can examine charged issues in coordination with state and federal agencies, but outside of the official government process, to help deconflict issues and identify consensus paths forward.”
Odell received a B.S. in biology from The Evergreen State College in 1986 and a M.S. in wildlife and fisheries conservation from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 2003. His work will be funded by UCI external grants and contracts.
The Urban Coast Institute (UCI) invites Monmouth University undergraduate and graduate students of all majors to apply for 2023 Heidi Lynn Sculthorpe Scholars Summer Research Grants. The deadline for submissions is April 7.
Funding is available for projects proposed by students that will be completed under the guidance of a faculty mentor, or projects proposed by a faculty member that will be completed with the support of student researchers. All proposals relevant to the mission of the UCI will be considered. Some specific topics of interest to the UCI include:
Proposals must be submitted online through the Heidi Lynn Sculthorpe Scholars Summer Research Grants application site (Monmouth student/staff login credentials required). Science students should apply for summer research support through the School of Science Summer Research Program.
For more details and guidance, see application page or contact UCI Associate Director Tom Herrington (therring@monmouth.edu).
The Urban Coast Institute’s signature annual event, the Future of the Ocean Symposium and Champion of the Ocean Awards reception, will return on April 13. Visit the event page for full details.
This year’s symposium will have a theme of “Catalyzing Innovation and Action for Oceans and Climate.” The symposium will be held at Monmouth University’s Great Hall Auditorium beginning at 4 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
The Champion of the Ocean Awards cocktail reception will immediately follow the symposium at the Great Hall Versailles and Pompeii Rooms at 6 p.m. Tickets are required for the reception. Visit the event page for tickets and sponsorship opportunities.
Urban Coast Institute Communications Director Karl Vilacoba worked with members of the Mid-Atlantic Committee on the Ocean’s offshore wind work group to create a miniseries of story maps offering an educational look at the basics of offshore wind energy transmission cable siting.
In one of the “Ocean Stories” features on the Mid-Atlantic Ocean Data Portal, Vilacoba interviewed Dominion Energy Environmental Services Environmental Technical Advisor Scott Lawton about some of the major factors involved in the design of the power cable route connecting to the first two offshore wind energy turbines in federal waters. The story and its scrolling data maps detail the need to steer clear of hazards and other ocean uses such as Naval training areas, fishing activity, shipwrecks and telecom cables while planning the cable alignment, which runs from Virginia Beach to the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind pilot turbines 27 miles offshore.
The other piece introduces the planning considerations involved with designing power cables in federal waters. Vilacoba worked with staff from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean, Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, New York State Department of State, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and U.S. Department of Energy to create the piece.
A non-mobile device is recommended for best viewing.
Associate Professor Kimberly Callas gave a Feb. 6 talk on artwork she created during her two-year faculty fellowship as the artist-in-residence for the Urban Coast Institute (UCI). The talk was presented in conjunction with Monmouth University’s ArtNOW: Performance, Art, and Technology series and Climate Crisis Teach-In lecture series.
During the fellowship, Callas created a series of large-scale (10′) drawings that connect images of the ocean, ocean archetypes, and the human body. Inspired by historical nautical charts hand-drawn and mounted on muslin, her drawings are made of graphite, dye, and India ink on paper and dyed muslin. They are then mounted on canvas. In the drawings, Callas uses latitude and longitude lines, and depth charts to ‘specifically place’ the work in places that follow the endangered North Atlantic right whale’s annual migration through the Jersey Shore. The drawings include symbols like the whale, fish, boat, net and horizon line, and archetypes like ‘the night sea journey,’ a journey navigated by stars to a new shore.
Callas is a multimedia artist, sculptor, and the lead artist of the social practice project Discovering the Ecological Self. She uses digital emerging technologies with traditional hand and clay modeling techniques to create life-size figures that combine the human body with symbols and patterns from nature. The figures are drawn or cast in plaster or bronze, 3D printed or routed out of wood with a computer numerical control (CNC). Ground pigments, beeswax, and natural materials such as wasp paper or birch bark are often used to finish the work.
Her work has been exhibited internationally in galleries and museums and has received national and international grants and awards. Recent awards include a Pollination Project Grant and Heidi Lynn Sculthorpe Scholars faculty enrichment grants. In 2020, she received the 1st Place Award in Sculpture at the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club’s Annual Exhibit in New York City. Other recent exhibits include the 2019 International New Media Exhibit at the CICA Museum in South Korea, Summer Exhibition at Flowers Gallery in New York City, 9×12 at Dual Galleria in Budapest, Hungary and Crossing Boundaries: Art and the Future of Energy at The Pensacola Museum of Art, Pensacola, FL. Her work has been published in Post Human, New Media Art 2020 by CICA Press and has appeared in the Huffington Post and Art New England. Callas received her MFA from the New York Academy of Art and her BFA from Stamps School of Art at the University of Michigan. She maintains a studio in both Maine and New Jersey.
Urban Coast Institute Communications Director Karl Vilacoba served as a presenter on a Jan. 31 Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean (MARCO) webinar on marine sanctuaries. Vilacoba, the project manager for the Mid-Atlantic Ocean Data Portal, demonstrated how to use the publicly available GIS mapping tool to get acquainted with the Hudson Canyon, which has been proposed for designation as a national marine sanctuary. Ben Haskell, deputy superintendent of Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuaries, presented a case study of sanctuaries as a conservation tool.
Urban Coast Institute Associate Director Tom Herrington and Department of Chemistry and Physics Adjunct Professor Matt Paccico delivered the joint presentation “The Sea at our Doorstep – How Rising Sea Level Will Change Our Coastal Communities in the Next 30 Years and Beyond” on Jan. 30, 2023, at the Edison Science Hall. Following the presentation, Kislak Real Estate Institute Interim Director Gina McKeever joined the panelists for a Q&A session with the audience.
The event kicked off Monmouth University’s 2023 Climate Crisis Teach-In lecture series. Visit the series web page for a full schedule of upcoming lectures.
The elevation of the sea relative to land has varied greatly over the history of the Earth, from 330 feet higher than today during the Cretaceous Period 100 million years ago to 400 feet lower than present at the end of the last glacial maximum 22,000 years ago. In the distant past and the present, global mean sea level rise is a direct effect of climate change, resulting from a combination of thermal expansion of warming ocean waters and the addition of water mass into the ocean, largely associated with the loss of ice from glaciers and ice sheets. Sea levels will continue to rise due to the ocean’s sustained response to the warming that has already occurred — even if climate change mitigation succeeds in limiting surface air temperatures in the coming decades. Due to the increase in global warming over the last century, sea level along the U.S. East Coast is projected to rise, on average, 10-14 inches (0.25 – 0.35 meters) in the next 30 years (2020-50), which will be as much as the rise measured over the last 100 years (1920-2020). Beyond 2050, uncertainty in sea level rise projections increases substantially, due to uncertainties in future greenhouse gas emissions and in long-term ice sheet stability in a warming world. The rise in sea level will create a profound shift in coastal flooding by causing tide and storm surge heights to increase and reach further inland, making coastal communities that are already experiencing increased frequency and intensity of coastal flooding more vulnerable to widespread damage. This presentation will review the processes on Earth responsible for sea level elevation changes and what the consequences will be for our coastal communities over the next 30 years, and what the consequences could be through the end of the century.
April showers bring July harmful algal blooms (HAB) in New Jersey’s largest coastal lake. A Monmouth University-led study published in the journal Urban Naturalist finds that Deal Lake is locked in a seasonal cycle that sees the system loaded with nutrients in the cold winter and early spring months, fueling bursts of cyanobacteria growth in the summer and early fall.
Endowed Professor in Marine Science Jason Adolf, the study’s lead author, likened HAB events to baking a cake, with a recipe requiring a few key ingredients: nitrogen, phosphorous, sunlight and warm water temperatures. The researchers found that during the cold months, stormwater runoff stocks the lake with nitrogen contained in materials such as lawn soils, fertilizers and road salts. As the waters heat up, the HAB organisms feast on the nitrogen and begin to balloon in number, clouding up the water and changing its chemistry. This in turn triggers a release of phosphorous stored in sediments along the lake bottom.
According to Adolf, nitrogen tends to be consumed somewhat quickly, leaving HABs to depend on heavy rainfalls to recharge the lake in order to sustain themselves. However, he noted that phosphorous does not break down as easy, and Deal Lake likely has a heavy supply of it locked within its floor throughout the year.
Like other coastal water bodies in Monmouth County, Deal Lake has seen heavy residential and commercial development along its waterfront and tributaries through the years, reducing natural buffers that would otherwise stop runoff from entering the system. Local sewer systems also funnel unfiltered stormwater straight from the streets into the lake. With a total surface area of 155 acres, Deal Lake borders seven municipalities with a combined population of over 70,000 – a number which swells during summer tourism season. It once flowed freely into the Atlantic Ocean between Asbury Park and Allenhurst, but today is connected via a flume gate that can be manually opened and closed to regulate water levels and allow for fish migrations in and out of the lake.
The study centered on 2017 and 2018 data collected by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) and experiments conducted on water samples taken at that time by Adolf and Monmouth students. Monmouth continues to monitor Deal Lake regularly through its leadership of the Coastal Lakes Observing Network (CLONet) and other research efforts.
A comparison of the modern data and that collected through a 1978 NJDEP study indicate the system has experienced significant changes. Average Deal Lake temperatures reached 84.2 degrees in July of 2017 and 82-84 degrees in July-August of 2018, versus 66.6 and 68.9 degrees reported in July and August of 1978. The authors raise two possible factors behind the rise in water temperatures: warming air temperatures in New Jersey and infilling from sediment runoff that’s left the lake shallower and easier to warm.
“The challenges for Deal Lake could become more serious as climate change advances, bringing warmer waters that are more hospitable to HABs,” Adolf said. “Communities along the lake should focus on targeted watershed improvements, including the restoration of wetlands and natural features around waterfront areas, to control seasonal nutrient loading from stormwater runoff. They should also consider dredging to reduce the phosphorous locked in the lake bottom in the winter and bring the body closer to its historic depths.”
The issue of HABs in New Jersey has gained attention in recent years due to lengthy closures at summer tourist destinations such as Lake Hopatcong and Greenwood Lake that impacted their local economies. The toxins present in HAB events can make humans and pets sick upon contact, cause mass fish kills, and threaten water supplies. They are characterized by green slicks that can resemble spilled paint and foul odors.
The study, “Nitrogen-Limited Cyanobacterial Harmful Algal Blooms in Deal Lake, New Jersey,” was co-authored by Katie Saldutti of the Rutgers University Department of Coastal Science; Erin Conlon of the Monmouth University Urban Coast Institute; and Eric Ernst, Bill Heddendorf, Sheri Shifren and Robert Schuster of the NJDEP Bureau of Marine Water Monitoring.
