Thesis Defense: Adam Rok

The Master’s Thesis Defense of UNC Marine Sciences graduate student, Adam Rok. Presented by the Department of Marine Sciences at UNC Chapel Hill. This event will be held on Friday, September 20th at 10:00 am. The location of this event will be in conference room 3204 on the 3rd floor of Murray/Venable Hall on UNC-CH campus in Chapel Hill, NC and streamed live to conference room 222 at the Institute of Marine Sciences (IMS) in Morehead City, NC and online via Zoom (Meeting ID: 650-061-384).

Seminar Title: Long- and Short-Term Oxygen Dynamics in Mystery Basin, a Model Florida Bay Basin

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 processes controlling oxygen dynamics and water exchanges provides key information for recognizing how future events can act in the short- or long-term transformation of the Bay. Central Florida Bay, where numerous small basins isolated by shallow shoals are located, has experienced many of these disturbances in recent decades. New insights about the dynamics of this system were obtained through the quantification of temporal variability in physical and biogeochemical processes in Mystery Basin. Time-series measurements of dissolved oxygen concentration distributions, sediment oxygen demand, current speed and direction and meteorological data show a system that has dramatic daily fluctuations of 50 µM of oxygen a day. Basin water temperatures are dominated by atmospheric conditions, leading to longer-term variability dictated by large scale atmospheric changes.