Collaboration at the New Jersey Aquaculture Innovation Center: “It’s a Family Operation”

Sean Towers, Dave Jones, and Mark Baranoski work to repair one of AIC’s seawater intakes. Photo credit: David Bushek.

New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station (NJAES) is a research and extension powerhouse that shares knowledge and best practices from its farms, labs, institutes and innovation hubs with residents and businesses in the state. Behind the scenes, NJAES teams are doing complex work that requires diverse skillsets, hands-on experience and keen problem-solving abilities. The New Jersey Aquaculture Innovation Center (AIC) is an NJAES …

Scientists Discover Link Between Climate Change and Biological Evolution of Phytoplankton

Emergence of new species of the coccolithophere (calcite producing marine algae), paced by approximately 400,000 year variations in the shape of Earth’s revolutions around the sun (eccentricity shown in inset) has been documented by the changes in the shape and size of their internal calcite plates shown here in photos obtained from scanning electron microscope. Figure courtesy of Luc Beaufort, Centre for Research and Teaching in Environmental Geoscience in France.

Using artificial intelligence techniques, an international team that included Rutgers-New Brunswick researchers have traced the evolution of coccolithophores, an ocean-dwelling phytoplankton group, over 2.8 million years. Their findings, published this week in the journal Nature, reveal new evidence that evolutionary cycles in a marine phytoplankton group are related to changes in tropical seasonality, shedding light on the link between biological evolution …

Rutgers Awarded $750,000 Multi-Institutional Grant to Develop Online Tools for Demonstrating Societal Impacts of Scientific Research

Distinguished Professor Scott Glenn (Center for Ocean Observing Leadership or COOL) discusses ocean gliders with a group of middle school students attending an Ocean Day community event.

Rutgers University and the University of Missouri-Columbia recently received a $750,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop online tools to help university researchers connect their research with society. The National Science Foundation (NSF), as part of its granting requirements, encourages researchers to provide opportunities for the public to engage and share their findings with policy makers, educators …

Engineering, Data Science and Mathematical Models to Optimize Wind Energy Farms

wind turbine

The wind energy industry could soon count on a much-needed precise analysis to achieve an optimal balance for wind farm productivity and profitability, thanks to a team of researchers working with digitization, predictive and prescriptive analytics to bring down its operational costs. Rutgers researchers led by Principal Investigator Ahmed Aziz Ezzat, assistant professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering at the School of …

Rutgers Receives NOAA Funds to Collect Unique Ocean and Coastal Data as Part of MARACOOS Cooperative Agreement

Ocean temperature, currents and glider paths (black) in the coastal Mid-Atlantic on November 2, 2021. These maps are publicly available at oceansmap.maracoos.org.

Oscar Schofield, chair Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences (principal investigator) and Michael Crowley, MARACOOS technical director are working with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Association Coastal Ocean Observing System (MARACOOS) on a $1,542,076 cooperative agreement funded through NOAA to collect unique ocean and coastal data that is transformed into information products that support jobs, the economy, safety and well-being for the more than 78 …

Four From Rutgers Named 2022 NOAA Sea Grant Knauss Marine Policy Fellows

Four From Rutgers Named 2022 NOAA Sea Grant Knauss Marine Policy Fellows

Four Rutgers graduate students – the highest number from any institution of higher education in the United States – are among 74 finalists selected for the 2022 class of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Sea Grant John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship Program. Named after oceanographer and meteorologist John A. Knauss, one of the founders of the Sea Grant and …

Shoring Up the Jersey Shore

Coastal communities are increasingly threatened by severe weather. The Coastal Climate Risk and Resilience initiative trains Rutgers graduate students to collaborate with local decision-makers and help vulnerable communities prepare for the impact of climate change. In 2012, New Jersey residents got an alarming tutorial on what unmitigated climate change portends when Hurricane Sandy, one of the worst storms in state …

Corals Carefully Organize Proteins to Form Rock-Hard Skeletons

Stylophora pistillata, a common stony coral in the Indo-Pacific. Photo: Kevin Wyman/Rutgers University

Scientists’ findings suggest corals will withstand climate change Charles Darwin, the British naturalist who championed the theory of evolution, noted that corals form far-reaching structures, largely made of limestone, that surround tropical islands. He didn’t know how they performed this feat. Now, Rutgers scientists have shown that coral structures consist of a biomineral containing a highly organized organic mix of …

“Ghost Forests” Expanding Along Northeast U.S. Coast

Standing dead tree trunks (a ghost forest) dominate this coastal landscape in New Jersey's Mullica River watershed. Dead and down trunks from an earlier forest that was buried in marsh sediment are exposed along the water's edge. Photo: Jennifer Walker

Higher groundwater levels from sea-level rise and increased flooding are likely the most important factors Why are “ghost forests” filled with dead trees expanding along the mid-Atlantic and southern New England coast? Higher groundwater levels linked to sea-level rise and increased flooding from storm surges and very high tides are likely the most important factors, according to a Rutgers study on the …

A Conversation with Polar Oceanographer Rebecca Jackson

Rebecca Jackson at work. Photo courtesy Rutgers University.

This article by John Dos Passos Coggin continues Climate.gov’s series of interviews with current and former fellows in the NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Program about the nature of their research funded by NOAA and what career and education highlights preceded and followed it. Over the past 30 years, the Postdoctoral Program, funded by NOAA Climate Program Office, has hosted over 200 …