Research Seminar: Adam Rok

A research seminar from UNC Marine Sciences graduate student, Adam Rok. Presented by the UNC at Chapel Hill Department of Marine Sciences. The location of this event will be in seminar room G201 on the ground floor of Murray Hall on UNC-CH campus in Chapel Hill, NC. This event will be held on Monday, November 19th at 12:20pm.

Seminar Title: An Oxygen Budget for Mystery Basin, Central Florida Bay

Abstract: Recent phytoplankton blooms, seagrass die-offs and major storms have significantly altered benthic communities and nutrient element cycling in Florida Bay. Determining the rates of baseline processes controlling oxygen dynamics and tidally-driven water exchanges, provides key information for recognizing how future blooms, storms and other ecological disturbances can act to either temporarily or permanently transform the Bay. Central Florida Bay, where numerous small basins isolated by shallow shoals are located, has experienced many of these disturbances. Time-series measurements of dissolved oxygen, sediment oxygen demand, current speed and direction and meteorological data were utilized to quantify water transport processes and to create an oxygen budget for Mystery Basin; a small basin useful for understanding impacts of the central Bay area. New insights about the impacts of episodic events, like major blooms and storms, were obtaining through the quantification of temporal variability in physical and biogeochemical processes controlling the oxygen dynamics within this basin.