Author Archives: kightp

About kightp

Pat Kight is the web and digital media specialist for Oregon Sea Grant at Oregon State University.

National Sea Grant office seeks science officer

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NOAA’s National Sea Grant College Program is advertising for a Social Scientist/Program Officer to work in the Silver Spring, MD, headquarters office. The position will serve as both a Program Officer and the National Sea Grant Social Science Specialist. The application deadline is Nov. 30.

The National Sea Grant College Program is NOAA’s primary university-based program in support of coastal resource use and conservation.  The national office oversees 32 university-based Sea Grant programs that work locally and regionally to conduct  scientific research, education, training, and outreach projects designed to foster science-based decisions about the use and conservation of our aquatic resources.

Read more …

OSU wave energy project on Oregon Field Guide

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Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Oregon Field Guide updates Oregon State University’s research into using the energy of ocean waves to generate electricity. The research, led by OSU electrical engineer Annette von Jouanne, got early support with a small “starter grant” from Oregon Sea Grant.

Since then, Sea Grant Extension agents on the coast have been helping communities learn about the potential benefits – and costs – of wave energy, and serving as liaisons between researchers, power companies and fishermen concerned with how large-scale energy production could affect their livelihoods.

Watch the Oregon Field Guide episode

Read about Sea Grant’s early involvement: [.pdf] [HTML]

Prepare now to survive a West Coast tsunami

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Pat CorcoranASTORIA, Ore. – Two weeks after tsunamis in Sumatra and American Samoa initiated by powerful earthquakes killed hundreds of people, a growing number of Oregonians are wondering how people living along the West Coast will fare when a large – and possibly overdue – quake shakes our own soil.

“Unfortunately, our fascination with the physical phenomena eclipses our interest in preparing to survive our next big earthquake and tsunami,” said Patrick Corcoran, coastal hazards outreach specialist with the Oregon Sea Grant program at Oregon State University.

(Read more …)

Climate change adds uncertainty to fisheries management

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A new analysis of fisheries management concludes that climate change will significantly increase the variability of the size and location of many fish populations, creating uncertainty for fisheries managers – and the need for greater flexibility.

Most management processes are slow and cumbersome, as well as rigid, the authors say, and don’t adequately take climate change and human behavior into account.

“What climate change will do is pit the increased resource variability against the rigidity of the process,” said Susan Hanna, a fishery economist from Oregon State University and co-author of the report.

“Over time, managers will have to become more conservative to account for the greater uncertainty, and we will need to do a better job of understanding the effect of uncertainty on human behavior,” said Hanna, a long-time Oregon Sea Grant economics specialist.

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Podcast features Nobel economics winner

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Elinor OstromCongratulations to Elinor Ostrom, the Indiana University political scientist who is one of two recipients of this year’s Nobel Prize for economics.

Ostrom, known for her work on the management of common resources, is the first woman to win a Nobel in economics.

A year ago, Dr. Ostrom sat down with Oregon Sea Grant’s Joe Cone to talk about the challenges of communicating about climate change. The two-part interview, in which she discusses system-based approaches to thinking and talking about the resilience of social and economic systems, is available on our Communicating Climate Change podcast. The episode also includes a link to her 2007 National Academy of Sciences article, “A diagnostic approach for going beyond panaceas.”

Ostrom is among several leading social scientists interviewed for the podcast over the past year and a half.

Quest-building workshop

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Looking for a way to connect people with community? Quests are fun clue-directed hunts that get people outdoors exploring the natural, historical and cultural treasures of special places. All it takes is a pencil, a set of directions and a sense of adventure – follow the directions, discover clues and find a hidden Quest box where you can log your success.

The Oregon Coast Quests program, developed by Oregon Sea Grant’s marine education team at the Hatfield Marine Science Center, already has 25 Quests in coastal Lincoln County. Now they’re offering a workshop to teach others how to build their own.

QUEST-BUILDING WORKSHOP
Saturday, February 6, 2010, 1 pm – 4 pm.
OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center, Newport
Registration:$25 /person.

Space is limited to 20 participants, and you need to register by Jan. 29, 2010

The workshops are tailored for teachers, park and museum staffers, local history buffs, naturalists and others interested in using this enjoyable, all-ages adventure format to teach about local human and natural history. Participants will learn about the Quest format and educational philosophy, try out an existing Quest, and build a short practice Quest.

For more information, and a downloadable registration form, visit the Oregon Coast Quests page.

For more information about Oregon Coast Quests or the Quest-building workshop, contact Cait Goodwin at cait.goodwin@oregonstate.edu or 541-961-0968. Tailored workshops and curriculum support are also available.

Ocean Observatories Initiative signed

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Giving scientists never-before-seen views of the world’s oceans, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Consortium for Ocean Leadership (COL) have signed a Cooperative Agreement that supports the construction and initial operation of the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI).

OOI will provide a network of undersea sensors for observing complex ocean processes such as climate variability, ocean circulation, and ocean acidification at several coastal, open-ocean and seafloor locations.

Continuous data flow from hundreds of OOI sensors will be integrated by a sophisticated computing network, and will be openly available to scientists, policy makers, students and the public.

Oregon State University, along with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, will be responsible for the system’s coastal and global moorings and their associated autonomous vehicles.

Read more from the National Science Foundation…

Chinese visit Oregon to discuss marine invasives

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Spartina_alternifloraRepresentatives from China’s Fujian Academy of Science-Forestry-Institute of Ecology and Environment are visiting Oregon this week to confer with an Oregon Sea Grant specialist on methods of fighting the spread of an invasive grass species.

The grass, Spartina alterniflora (also known as cordgrass), is native to the east coast of North America. The grass was introduced into a Fujian estuary in 1982 and has spread rapidly. Spartina invasions have also occurred on the west coast of the U.S. In China, the fast-spreading grass threatens the survival of native mangrove forests.

In 2007 Oregon Sea Grant Extension agent Sam Chan and a team of researchers, educators, and resource managers from Oregon, Washington and Florida visited Fujian, a province about half the size of Oregon, on the southeastern coast of China. This week, the Chinese team is visiting OSU.

Read more …

Pacific tsunami highlights need to prepare

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The tsunami that struck American Samoa this week – and prompted a brief warning on the Oregon coast – illustrates the need for coastal tsunami preparedness, and how far most of the tsunami-prone world has to go toward developing an effective warning and response system.

This CBS News report on the science of tsunamis includes a good animation of how tsunamis occur, along with commentary by Dawn Wright, Oregon State University geosciences professor. National Public Radio, meanwhile, reported on progress toward preparedness in the seismically active Pacific Rim since the devastating tsunami that struck Indonesia in 2004. “The biggest challenge … remains keeping people aware and knowledgeble about this hazard so that they strike, people do the right thing, ” said Charles McCreery, director of NOAA’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii.

In Oregon, Sea Grant’s Pat Corcoran is among those working to make coastal communities and their residents aware of what to do should a tsunami strike our coast:

For more information about tsunamis and preparedness, watch the Oregon Sea Grant video “Reaching Higher Ground.”