Tag: Biological Oceanography

Monitoring and Water Quality

Humans influence the marine nitrogen cycle through their additions of nitrogen to the coastal environment, mostly from agricultural fertilizers and waste treatment facilities, leading to eutrophication and oxygen depletion. With novel isotopic tools, GSO researchers follow the movement of nitrogen through marine waters, helping guide intelligent wastewater management policies. How do estuaries respond to changes […]

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Fisheries and Population Dynamics

Understanding exploited fish and invertebrate population dynamics relies on indirect estimates of abundance in relation to biological, environmental, and harvesting factors affecting fluctuations in populations. GSO fisheries oceanographers develop reliable methodologies for robust fish stock assessment from commercial catch and survey data. Multispecies, age-structured statistical analyses (such as from the Georges Bank fish community), and […]

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Science for Coastal Management

The recently-completed Ocean Special Area Management Plan (Ocean SAMP) brought together talented GSO/URI oceanographers and writers to produce a science-based management and regulatory plan to help stakeholders, managers, and policy makers make wise use of the Rhode Island’s offshore waters (RI Sound, Block Island Sound, and the associated continental shelf region of the Atlantic Ocean). […]

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Long Term Surveys

With more than 140 species documented so far in Narragansett Bay and Rhode Island Sound, one of the world’s longest surveys of fish and invertebrates continues, weekly and year-round, since 1959, in catch-and-release otter-trawl samplings. The 55-year dataset documents shifts in patterns of species abundance and composition in relation to environmental conditions and fishing effort. […]

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