{"id":12319,"date":"2016-07-27T12:34:35","date_gmt":"2016-07-27T16:34:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/?p=12319"},"modified":"2016-07-27T12:34:35","modified_gmt":"2016-07-27T16:34:35","slug":"surfs-up-2016-rhode-island-undergrads-in-research-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/2016\/07\/27\/surfs-up-2016-rhode-island-undergrads-in-research-18\/","title":{"rendered":"SURF’s up 2016: Rhode Island undergrads in research"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn engineering, you mostly learn from textbooks, classes and labs.\u00a0You don\u2019t get to go out and do fieldwork. But this, it\u2019s not just the whole math of the ocean. You get to see the whole ecosystem working together.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Madison_Hannah\"<\/a>Research fellow:<\/strong> Hannah Madison
\nHometown:<\/strong> Latham, NY
\nSchool:<\/strong> University of Rhode Island<\/a>
\nMajor:<\/strong> Ocean Engineering
\nMentors:<\/strong> Lindsay Green, Carol Thornber, Stephen Licht
\nProject:<\/strong> Monitoring harmful algal blooms in Narragansett Bay via ecological and aerial technology approaches and determining the impacts of climate change on the physiology of bloom-forming macroalgae<\/p>\n

\"scan\"<\/a>
Scan this code to download the 9th Annual RI SURF Conference guide. Or, follow this link to send the guide to your phone or tablet \u2014 https:\/\/guidebook.com\/g\/surfri2016\/<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As an ocean engineering student, senior Hannah Madison says most of her undergraduate experience has taken place in classrooms and labs. But, the RI EPSCoR Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship<\/a> (SURF) program changed all that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn engineering, you mostly learn from textbooks, classes and labs,\u201d observes Madison. \u201cYou don\u2019t get to go out and do fieldwork. But this, it\u2019s not just the whole math of the ocean. You get to see the whole ecosystem working together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Madison spent her 10-week fellowship helping investigate the formation and regulation of macroalgal blooms in Narragansett Bay, testing the accuracy of recently developed aerial technology used to monitor the blooms. The project seeks to determine the response of bloom-forming macroalgae to predicted climate change scenarios with a focus on what happens with increased amounts of rain.<\/p>\n

Macroalgal blooms appear frequently along coastal communities and pose serious ecological and economic threats. Under climate change scenarios, scientists predict the magnitude and duration of blooms will increase, wielding serious impacts on the structure and functioning of coastal marine food webs.<\/p>\n

In essence, Madison explains, she is studying the overall effects of climate change on algal diversity, how their populations might thrive or die under different water temperatures and levels of nitrogen: \u201cWe go in the water and along the shoreline to count algal species, to see how the population of the different algae changes. We\u2019re looking to see any trends because of climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to the ongoing sites under study in Narragansett Bay, Madison says the summer fellowship has taken her to research in its second year at Napatree Point in Westerly, studying the seasonal differences from May to June, taking into account changes in temperature and nutrient levels.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has all been completely new to me,\u201d she says, smiling. \u201cI never looked at seaweed before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking ahead to graduation in the spring, Madison cites the Block Island wind farm project and the need for environmental impact studies: \u201cI want to do something with renewable energy, study what the effects will be on these different species, what the engineering impact will be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Story and photo by Amy Dunkle<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn engineering, you mostly learn from textbooks, classes and labs.\u00a0You don\u2019t get to go out and do fieldwork. But this, it\u2019s not just the whole math of the ocean. You get to see the whole ecosystem working together.\u201d Research fellow: Hannah Madison Hometown: Latham, NY School: University of Rhode Island Major: Ocean Engineering Mentors: Lindsay […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[21,51],"tags":[366,570,741],"class_list":["post-12319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-surfsup","tag-macroalgal-blooms","tag-rhode-island-nsf-epscor","tag-university-of-rhode-island"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}