MPOWIR webinar

Sarah Giddingsnews

25 March 2020 – Sarah participated as a panel member in the MPOWIR webinar discussion on Leading People and Projects. MPOWIR = Mentoring Physical Oceanography Women to Increase Retention is a community-based program providing mentoring and workshops for junior physical oceanographers (late graduate school through early career) aiming to reduce barriers to career development for all junior physical oceanography scientists.

LPL IG experiment

Sarah Giddingsnews

31 January – 03 March 2020 Duncan led an intensive field experiment to look at IG wave propagation into Los Peñasquitos Lagoon. He deployed a large suite of instruments within a small area near the lagoon mouth to assess wave propagation and influences on other parameters of interest.

Ocean Sciences 2020

Sarah Giddingsnews

17-21 February 2020. All members of the Giddings lab attended and presented at the 2020 Ocean Sciences Meeting, held in our hometown of San Diego! Sarah was a session chair of the Dynamics of Buoyancy-Driven Flows in Estuaries, Continental Shelves, and Polar Seas session and an invited speaker for a Town Hall on US/Mexico border pollution issues IOOS/SCCOOS partnerships. Maddie, Alma, Isa, Sarah, Duncan, Angelica, Xiaodong, Lauren, and several others working with the group presented talks and posters on their research.

Bocas del Toro, Panama field work

Sarah Giddingsnews

As part of a new NSF-funded project, I am collaborating with coPIs Geno Pawlak (UCSD), Kristen Davis (UCI) and Rachel Collin (Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute) to examine the physical processes impacting the formation and breakdown of hypoxia in a tropical estuary. Our field site is Bocas del Toro, Panama, an enclosed tropical bay that experiences seasonal and intermittent hypoxia. During January 2020 several of us went to help graduate student Annie Adelson recover, download, reprogram, and redeploy a large mooring array in the bay. Annie spent five months during 2019-2020 living as a Smithsonian Institution Fellow at the STRI Bocas del Toro Research station. It was an intense but successful field campaign!

El Niño impacts on CA estuaries

Sarah Giddingsnews

A recent paper in Estuaries & Coasts by graduate student Maddie Harvey investigates the “Effects of Elevated Sea Levels and Waves on Southern California Estuaries During the 2015–2016 El Niño.” The 2015-2016 El Niño resulted in larger waves and water levels along with lower than usual precipitation along the Southern California coastline. This allowed for an opportunity to investigate estuarine response to these types of extreme forcing conditions, which may be expected under future climate scenarios. Collaborations with multiple co-authors resulted in comparing observations from 13 Southern California estuaries. Important results of this paper highlight the different response of intermittently closed estuaries relative to perennially open estuaries. Intermittently closed estuaries experienced enhanced higher-high water levels during large wave events, and tides were truncated during low tide due to a sill at the estuary mouth. The overall number and length of closures were increased during the 2015–2016 El Niño relative to a typical year.

2 new postdoc positions open!

Sarah Giddingsnews

These positions are now closed.

Postdoc in small plume/surfzone interactions at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD

The Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) Center for Coastal Studies, UCSD, is looking for a postdoctoral scholar to work on an NSF-funded project aiming to improve our understanding of the fate of small river plumes as they interact with the surfzone. This work has direct relevance to coastal transport of environmental constituents ranging from larvae to pollution. The postdoctoral scholar will be responsible for collecting and analyzing field observations, and helping to run/analyze realistic coupled numerical simulations at the interface of small buoyant plumes and the surfzone. A strong background in physical oceanography is required and preference will be given to those with expertise in coastal dynamics with both observational and modeling experience. The position will be located at SIO working with Dr. Sarah Giddings, with opportunities to mentor graduate and undergraduate students and work with co-PIs and colleagues at UW and SIO. Additional information and application instructions for this postdoctoral position can be found here.

 

Postdoc in Predicting coastal water quality, USCRP Topic #3, Understanding the crossroads of human and ecosystem health

The Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) Center for Coastal Studies, UCSD, is looking for a postdoctoral scholar to work on a USCRP-funded project aiming to improve our understanding of the transport of polluted waters along the coastline. The postdoctoral scholar will be responsible for building upon an existing realistic regional numerical model to incorporate the transport of tracers representative of pollutants within the ROMS/COAWST framework. This will include testing decay rates for tracers, building and testing an open-source ROMS module with various pollutant tracer models to represent a range of pollutants, testing the sensitivity of pollutant “behavior” for predicted water quality conditions, and generating an ensemble of parameter space to simplify coastal water quality predictions. A strong background in oceanography is required and preference will be given to those with significant expertise in numerical modeling, particularly ROMS. The position will be located at SIO working with Drs. Sarah Giddings, Falk Feddersen, and Kate Ricke, with opportunities to mentor graduate and undergraduate students and work with colleagues at SIO and UCSD. Moreover, there will be opportunities for interaction with USCRP program managers, outreach, and stakeholder engagement on coastal pollution issues. Additional information and application instructions for this postdoctoral position can be found here.

biosensor deployments

Sarah Giddingsnews

25 – 26 November 2019 – We deployed hydrodynamic & biosensor moorings in Los Peñasquitos Lagoon as part of our NOAA NCCOS Coastal Hypoxia Research Program (CHRP) field experiments. Unfortunately our Tijuana Estuary deployments have been postponed due to poor water quality conditions. This work was recently featured by KPBS!

 

biosensor prep!

Sarah Giddingsnews

14 – 22 November 2019 – We have been preparing for our NOAA NCCOS Coastal Hypoxia Research Program (CHRP) field deployments. This includes gathering oysters from our field sites, attaching biosensors to them, programming hydrodynamic instruments, and preparing moorings. Prior test deployments with an undergraduate research team were highlighted here. Now we are collaborating with Dr. Luke Miller and MS student Gabby Kalbach from SDSU using their sensor packages. This work was recently featured by KPBS!

Dr. Madeleine Harvey!

Sarah Giddingsnews

06 November 2019 – We have a new Dr! Dr. Madeleine Harvey defended her dissertation on November 6th and submitted all paperwork at the end of November so that she is now officially a Dr. Congratulations Maddie!!! Amazing work pulling together a truly unique set of estuarine measurements and a beautifully done presentation. Maddie will be sticking around the lab for another couple months after which she will be headed off to Rhode Island where she will be starting at NUWC.