Highlights of ERF meeting in Rhode Island

I attended the Estuarine Research Federation’s scientific meeting held in Providence, Rhode Island from November 4-9, 2007. I presented a paper on the spatial and temporal dynamics of dissolved oxygen in a tide-dominated estuary in central California. Highlights of the conference included:

Name change: the members of ERF voted to change the name to Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation (CERF).

Emphasis on observatories: there were several sessions on coastal and estuarine observatory efforts. Many presentations were related to the regional IOOS programs, and NANOOS was prevalent with numerous oral presentations on Hood Canal and Puget Sound from Jan Newton, and Al Devol and others.

Estuary classification: Rocky Geyer (WHOI) gave an entertaining presentation that focused on a two-parameter representation of estuarine forcing functions – the river flow and the tidal velocity. Individual estuaries fall on a two-dimensional plot between ‘long’ and ‘short’ estuaries depending on the distinct mixing and residence time characteristics. The Columbia River estuary falls into the ‘short’ category, with estuarine length similar to the tidal excursion.

Microbial studies: Byron Crump hosted a day long session on microbes in estuaries. The talks ranged from characterization of archea and bacterial communities to N2 fixation by cyanobacteria. An interesting technique that was prevalent in many talks was using PCR (polymerase chain reaction) followed by DGGE (denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis) to fingerprint bacterial communities.

LOBO moorings: The project that I worked on at MBARI was called the Land/Ocean Biogeochemical Observatory. The main focus was on building biogeochemical-oriented moorings for estuaries. Satlantic was given the rights to commercialize our moorings and there was several posters at the meeting about applications of these commercial LOBO moorings. The most interesting story is a non-profit organization in Florida that raised approximately 2 million dollars in private donations to purchase 8 LOBO moorings (and hire people to maintain them). I met the two scientists behind the project, and they are young, enthusiastic scientists who saw an opportunity to make something from nothing. Each mooring will have a private donors name or message on it. This will be one of the biggest coastal observatories (in terms of number of moorings and instruments) and there is absolutely no traditional funding involved!