{"id":13167,"date":"2026-05-15T11:52:05","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T15:52:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/maf\/?p=13167"},"modified":"2026-05-15T11:52:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T15:52:06","slug":"maf-511-ocean-uses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/maf\/2026\/05\/15\/maf-511-ocean-uses\/","title":{"rendered":"MAF 511, Ocean Uses"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Required for :<\/strong> MMA, MA, PhD<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Typical Semester :<\/strong> Fall<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Typically Taught By :<\/strong> Rick Burroughs \/ Whit Saumweber<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;Examines major ocean uses and the governance systems that regulate them.&nbsp;MAF 511. Ocean uses and marine science.&nbsp; Ocean uses applies the subfields of oceanography to frame contemporary public policy problems related to the ocean and coast.&nbsp; Science\/policy topics include beaches, marshes, earthquakes, tsunamis, oil, acidification, deep-sea mining, thermohaline circulation, and fisheries.&nbsp; Climate change, the concluding section of the course covers climates present, past, and future with attention to the carbon cycle and factors influencing it.&nbsp;<br>For those in marine affairs the ocean and coasts are a primary unit of study.&nbsp; But unlike the natural scientists who probe its basic processes, we are interested in its interactions with people through the uses they make of the coast and ocean.&nbsp; We consider how uses affect the ocean (coastal development, fishing, marine pollution, etc.) and how the ocean affects us (hurricanes, sea level, tsunamis, etc.).&nbsp; We learn how natural systems constrain human uses. &nbsp; We do that by considering findings in geological, physical, chemical, and biological oceanography as presented in an introductory text.&nbsp; Each subfield of oceanography can speak to a use or uses.&nbsp; For example, if we know about biological systems, we can apply that information to managing fisheries.&nbsp; The most consequential use of the sea now is storage of heat and carbon dioxide associated as it is a big player in climate change.&nbsp; So, for the final section of the course we apply all the oceanographic sciences to understanding how climate change will affect uses in the future. Our perspective is to recognize that ocean science is a platform that bounds uses and public policies about them to better fit human aspirations on a finite planet.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Required for : MMA, MA, PhD Typical Semester : Fall Typically Taught By : Rick Burroughs \/ Whit Saumweber &nbsp;Examines major ocean uses and the governance systems that regulate them.&nbsp;MAF 511. Ocean uses and marine science.&nbsp; Ocean uses applies the subfields of oceanography to frame contemporary public policy problems related to the ocean and coast.&nbsp; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5144,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/maf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/maf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/maf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/maf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/maf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/maf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13168,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/maf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13167\/revisions\/13168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/maf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/maf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/maf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}