Texas A&M University Graduate Catalog 2003-2004 Edition

Department of Oceanography

M. A. Allison, J. W. Ammerman, A. Anis, J. G. Baldauf, D. C. Biggs*, D. A.Brooks, W. R. Bryant*, L. Campbell, P. Chang, L. A. Cifuentes, T. M. Dellapenna, S. F. DiMarco, R. A. Duce, S. Z. El-Sayed, W. E. Evans, P. J. Fox, W. D.Gardner (Head), B.S.Giese, G.A.Gill, L.L.Griffin, N. L. Guinasso, Jr., R. D. Hetland, G. A. Jackson, G. A. Jones, S. B. Joye, M. C. Kennicutt, D.J.Klein, R. A. Long, I. R. MacDonald, J. W. Morse*, G.R.North, W. D. Nowlin,Jr., J. L. Pinckney, B. J. Presley, P. D.Rabinowitz, R. O. Reid, M.J.Richardson, G.T.Rowe, W. W. Sager, P. H. Santschi, R. Sassen, F. C. Schlemmer, T. G. Schmalz, J. R. Schwarz, M. R. Scott, W.A.Seitz, J. L. Sericano, N. C. Slowey, B. J. Smallwood, R.H.Stewart, R. R. Stickney, A. Stoessel*, A. C. Vastano, T. L. Wade, J. S. Watkins, T. Whitworth, J. H. Wormuth

* Graduate Advisor

Degrees.

Degrees of Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy are offered in oceanography. The Department of Oceanography can also serve as the "home" department for the Master of Geoscience degree. The MGsc is a non-thesis degree that provides a multidisciplinary background in the geosciences, appropriate for science teachers in public schools, or for individuals interested in environmental issues, for example.

Oceanography.

Oceanography is the interdisciplinary science that focuses on the ocean, its contents and its boundaries. Whereas typical graduate programs lead to progressively greater amounts of specialization, oceanography as an interdisciplinary field admits graduates of specialized areas such as biology, chemistry, geology, geophysics, mathematics, physics or engineering and initially generalizes and broadens their education with a core of required courses. These core courses include the four specializations of the oceanography program--biological, chemical, geological/geophysical and physical oceanography--as well as a seminar covering the state of the science. After this exposure to the interdisciplinary nature of oceanography, the graduate student refocuses in his or her particular subject area to pursue research at the leading edge of the science. In addition, special programs in multidisciplinary ocean modeling and climate studies exist.

Required prerequisites are the equivalent of a BS degree and basic courses in the fields mentioned above. All students are expected to have had mathematics through integral calculus, at least one year each of physics and chemistry, and at least one survey course in biology and geology. These are in addition to the usual amount of course work in their major field of science or engineering.

To qualify for an advanced degree in oceanography, the student must demonstrate an ability to apply basic science to the marine environment. This capability requires a combination of principles and methods and a certain body of knowledge unique to oceanography; a student of oceanography must become conversant in all of the marine sciences.

Facilities and Participation in Research.

Facilities include office, laboratory and classroom space in the 15-story David G. Eller Building for Oceanography and Meteorology on the College Station campus; the Geochemical and Environmental Research Group, which occupies 20,000 square feet of laboratory and office space and a warehouse-shop area of 8,000 square feet; space at the Texas A&M University Riverside Campus; office, shop and dock facilities on Pelican Island in Galveston, Texas; the R/V Gyre, a 182-foot oceangoing research vessel. The O&M Building houses a specialized library with books and journals on oceanographic and meteorological topics. The department maintains a network of high performance workstations, personal computers and data storage facilities for use in the collection and analysis of data and for ocean modeling and marine geophysical studies. High speed internet connections allow faculty and students to connect to outside supercomputer centers such as those at NCAR. Two computer labs with Apple Macs, PCs and workstations are available for student use. Graduate students usually take an active part in research grants and contracts awarded to individual professors and research teams by federal and state agencies, industry and private foundations.

Required Courses.

OCNG 608, 620, 630, 640, and 642 and two hours of oceanography seminar (OCNG 681) are required of all graduate students who are candidates for MS and PhD degrees. Further information is available from the department or the website at oceanography.tamu.edu.

(OCNG)

600. Survey of Oceanography. (3-0). Credit 3.

General survey of the scientific framework of oceanographic study; applications of ocean research to social and economic problems; interrelations between the ocean disciplines and other fields of study. Prerequisite: Approval of instructor.

602. Ocean Research and Operational Techniques. (1-5). Credit 3.

Technical, operational and legal aspects of sea-going research operations; planning and executing ocean research operations; practice in techniques and equipment regularly used aboard ships; familiarization with acquisition and processing of data. Prerequisite: Approval of instructor.

604. Biological Oceanography Cruise. Credit 2.

Specialized experience in research methods and analysis in biological oceanography via preparation for and participation in a research cruise of at least two weeks duration under the supervision of a Texas A&M oceanography faculty member. May be taken for credit up to two times for MS candidates and four times for PhD candidates. Prerequisite: Approval of instructor.

605. Chemical Oceanography Cruise. Credit 2.

Specialized experience in research methods and analysis in chemical oceanography via preparation for and participation in a research cruise of at least two weeks duration under the supervision of a Texas A&M oceanography faculty member. May be taken for credit up to two times for MS candidates and four times for PhD candidates. Prerequisite: Approval of instructor.

606. Geological Oceanography Cruise. Credit 2.

Specialized experience in research methods and analysis in geological oceanography via preparation for and participation in a research cruise of at least two weeks duration under the supervision of a Texas A&M oceanography faculty member. May be taken for credit up to two times for MS candidates and four times for PhD candidates. Prerequisite: Approval of instructor.

608. Physical Oceanography. (3-2). Credit 4.

Observations, instruments; physical properties of seawater; property distributions; characteristics of water masses; heat budget; kinematics; gravity, pressure, hydrostatics, stability; horizontal flow; Coriolis force, geostrophy; friction, wind drift; general circulation; wave motions; tides. Prerequisite: MATH 172 or equivalent; PHYS219.

609. Dynamical Oceanography. (3-0). Credit 3.

Systematic treatment of the kinematics, dynamics and thermodynamics of the ocean; integral conservation relations; solenoidal versus conservative vector fields; potential vorticity; geostrophic adjustment; inertial and buoyancy modes; Bernoulli-Montgomery potential; energetics in a rotating system; available potential energy; natural temporal and spatial scales. Prerequisites: OCNG 608 or ATMO 435; MATH 601.

610. Mathematical Modeling of Marine Ecosystems. (3-2). Credit 4.

Theory and technique of model development for marine ecosystems; mathematical representation of interactions among nutrients, phytoplankton, zooplankton, fish and the physical environment; scrutiny of biological concepts and mathematical structure of existing models; laboratory segment to focus on computational techniques applicable to classroom problems. Prerequisites: OCNG 608 and 620, calculus or approval of instructor.

612. Elements of Ocean Wave Theory. (3-0). Credit 3.

Theories of simple harmonic surface gravity, capillary and internal waves. Wave propagation, dispersion and energy; modifications due to rotation, variable depth and finite amplitude. Prerequisites: OCNG 608 and MATH 601 or approval of instructor.

614. Dynamics of the Ocean and Atmosphere. (3-0). Credit 3.

Time-dependent motions in rotating, stratified fluids, with application to the ocean; Boussinesq and betaplane approximations; circulation, vorticity and energy conservation; Kelvin, Poincaré and Rossby waves; tidal forcing and response; quasi-geostrophic potential vorticity; concepts of barotropic and baroclinic instability.

615. Numerical Modeling of Ocean Circulation I. (3-2). Credit 4.

Mathematical theory and numerical technique of model development for ocean circulation; concepts of numerical consistency and stability; Lax equivalence theorem; commonly used finite difference schemes in ocean modeling; finite element and spectral methods as alternative means of discretisation; positivity and CFT method; relaxation and direct methods for solving elliptic equations. Prerequisite: OCNG 608.

616. Numerical Modeling of Ocean Circulation II. (3-2). Credit 4.

Quasigeostrophic ocean circulation models; Arakawa's energy and enstrophy conserving scheme; spectral barotropic vorticity model on sphere; shallow water primitive equation models; geostrophic adjustment on different numerical grids; boundary conditions in numerical models; introduction to ocean general circulation models; mixed models and sub-gridscale parameterization; oceanic data assimilation. Prerequisite: OCNG 615.

617. Theories of Ocean Circulation. (3-0). Credit 3.

Theories of wind-driven circulation, Sverdrup solution, frictional and inertial boundary regimes; instabilities, meanders and mesoscale features; role of stratification, topography and time dependence; Thermohaline circulation. Prerequisite: Graduate classification.

620. Biological Oceanography. (3-0). Credit 3.

Critical analysis of contribution of biological science to our understanding of sea; discernible interrelationships between organisms and physicochemical parameters. Prerequisites: General prerequisites for oceanography.

622. Analysis of Benthic Communities. (2-3). Credit 3.

Comprehensive study of marine benthos with principal emphasis upon Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea. Prerequisite: OCNG 620 or equivalent.

625. Current Topics in Biological Oceanography. (1-0). Credit 1.

Areas of current research; plankton processes; microbial food web; benthic communities; fisheries; global change. May be taken up to three times. Prerequisite: OCNG 620 or approval of instructor.

627. Ecology of the Continental Shelf. (3-0). Credit 3.

Environments, populations and communities of the continental shelf. Interactions of the shelf with the estuaries and the deep sea; man's impact on the shelf ecosystems. Prerequisite: Approval of instructor.

629. Lower Foodweb Dynamics of Aquatic Ecosystems. (2-3). Credit 3.

Dynamics of the lower foodweb in estuaries, rivers and lakes, detailing the role and interactions between biota and how they are influenced by abiotic processes; effect of man's activities on natural succession patterns and ecosystem productivity, elucidating the potential for new management practices. Prerequisite: Graduate classification. Cross-listed with WFSC 629.

630. Geological Oceanography. (3-0). Credit 3.

Survey of marine geology, structure and composition of ocean basins and continental margins, properties of marine sediments. Prerequisites: General prerequisites for oceanography.

632. Sea-Level Change. (3-0). Credit 3.

Modern sea level; topography, measurement, meteorologic and oceanographic contributions, periodic and non-periodic changes; long-term changes: determination, Cenozoic history, Quaternary glacial-interglacial fluctuations; changes during the past century and decade; observations, natural and anthropogenic influences; estimates of future changes and societal implications. Prerequisite: Graduate classification; approval of instructor.

640. Chemical Oceanography. (3-0). Credit 3.

Chemical composition and properties of seawater, evaluation of salinity, pH, excess base and carbon dioxide in sea. Marine nutrients, oxygen and other dissolved gases, organic constituents. Prerequisites: General prerequisites for oceanography.

641. Marine Chemistry. (3-0). Credit 3.

The physical/inorganic chemical properties of seawater and its interactions with marine minerals; major topics: thermochemical properties of seawater, equilibrium and kinetic processes controlling ion speciation; geochemical processes at mineral surfaces; kinetics of mineral-seawater interactions; applications to modeling early diagenesis. Prerequisite: OCNG 640 and/or GEOL 640.

642. Marine Biochemistry Lab. (0-2). Credit 1.

Laboratory exercises including analyses of salinity, oxygen, nutrients, carbon dioxide system, organics; focus on both dissolved and solid phases; measurements of phytoplankton biomass, productivity, growth and mortality; determination of water column and benthic biomass and respiration; microbial biomarkers; overview of field instrumentation. Prerequisites: General prerequisites for oceanography; graduate classification.

644. Isotope Geochemistry. (3-0). Credit 3.

Stable and radioactive isotope variations in natural materials; applications to geochronometric, geothermometric and paleoclimatologic studies of the marine environment. Prerequisite: Approval of the instructor.

645. Marine Organic Geochemistry. (3-0). Credit 3.

Origins, fates and distribution of organic compounds in contemporary marine environments and in recent and ancient sediments. Specific analytical techniques. Prerequisite: Approval of instructor.

647. Chemical Contamination of the Marine Environment. (3-0). Credit 3.

Assessment of the inputs, transfers, effects and fates of heavy metals, radio-nuclides, petroleum hydrocarbons, chlorinated hydrocarbons and other chemicals in the ocean; models developed to predict the future viability of the ocean with particular emphasis on the Gulf of Mexico. Prerequisite: Approval of instructor.

649. Estuarine Biogeochemistry. (3-0). Credit 3.

Geomorphology; physical oceanography and sedimentation dynamics of estuaries; chemistry of nutrients; trace metals and organic matter; major controls in estuarine productivity and interactions among estuaries, marshes and coastal waters. Prerequisites: OCNG 620 and 640.

650. Aquatic Microbial Ecology. (3-0). Credit 3.

Microbes in natural environments, including both water and sediment habitats in marine, fresh and ground water systems; process studies of microbial foodwebs and biogeochemical cycling; current methods and research directions. Prerequisites: OCNG 620 and WFSC 414 or approval of instructor. Cross-listed with WFSC 650.

651. Meteorological Oceanography. (3-0). Credit 3.

Interaction between the ocean and atmosphere; major features of the two systems; heat budget, teleconnections between ocean and atmosphere, El Niño and related phenomena. Prerequisite: OCNG 608.

652. Sedimentary Biogeochemistry. (3-2). Credit 4.

Focus on benthic processes occurring near the sediment-water interface of marine sediments; interdisciplinary approach in examining complex interrelationships among organisms, pore waters and sedimentary minerals in different marine environments; laboratory methods taught and applied to field case studies in different marine environments. Prerequisites: OCNG 620 and 640 or approval of instructor.

654. Plankton Ecology. (2-2) Credit 3.

Elective course, overview of phytoplankton and zooplankton; taxonomy; physiology; ecology; sampling design; current methods of investigation. Prerequisite: OCNG 620.

660. Implementing Marine Ecosystem Models. (3-0). Credit 3.

Examination of examples of implementations of models of marine ecosystems in the most influential papers; students expected to code the simpler examples and analyze them; review of important nutrient-phytoplankton-zooplankton (NPZ) models as well as other approaches to studying aquatic ecosystems. Prerequisite: OCNG 610.

662. Coastal and Marine Sedimentary Processes. (3-2). Credit 4.

Sedimentary processes (erosion, transport and deposition) from the coastline to the deep sea; development of estuaries, deltas, continental shelves, submarine canyons, fans; behavior of fluids and particles in boundary layers. Lab: recirculating flume, field and lab instrumentation. Prerequisite: Approval of instructor.

663. Particle Dynamics and Fluxes. (3-0). Credit 3.

Particle dynamics and processes from the sea surface to the seafloor; global distribution, dynamics and fluxes of particles from microns to millimeters (marine snow); results from sediment traps, optical sensors, particle counters applied to biogeochemical cycles in the ocean. Prerequisite: Approval of instructor.

668. Geology and Geophysics of Small Ocean Basins. (3-0). Credit 3.

Geology and geophysics of the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean, Mediterranean, Arctic Ocean, Red Sea and Philippine Sea; the regional geology, sediment distribution, general structure and origin of each basin. Prerequisite: OCNG 630.

673. High-Resolution Marine Geophysics. (2-2). Credit 3.

Introductory course on the geophysical nature of the seafloor and marine subbottom to 1.5 seconds two-way travel time; generation, use and interpretation of reflection and side-scan sonar records and magnetic anomalies of various marine environments and seafloor features. Prerequisite: Approval of instructor.

674. Paleoceanography. (3-0). Credit 3.

History of oceans through geologic time; marine paleontological, geochemical, sedimentological and geophysical evidence; inferred changes in seawater properties, ocean circulation and sea level; relation to climate, tectonic processes, atmospheric chemistry and evolution of life. Prerequisite: OCNG 630 or approval of instructor.

675. Environmental Management System Strategies for the Scientist. (3-0). Credit 3.

Provide students with EMS strategy skills: environmental laws that may be triggered by activities; fundamental structure of an EMS; EMS alternatives; concepts in an audit; alternative dispute resolution; how effectively EMS can reduce costs and increase profits. Prerequisite: Approval of instructor. Cross-listed with MARS 675 at Texas A&M University at Galveston.

676. Marine Environmental Policy: A Survey. (3-0). Credit 3.

Basic concepts and mechanisms of international and U.S. federal environmental law and policy; survey of the field and focus on case studies illustrating basic types of environmental problems. Prerequisite: Approval of instructor. Cross-listed with MARS 675 at Texas A&M University at Galveston.

681. Seminar. (1-0). Credit 1.

Presented by faculty, students, staff and visiting scientists; based on recent scientific research.

685. Directed Studies. Credit 1 to 4 each semester.

Special topics to suit small group requirements. Problems not within thesis research and not covered by any other course in established curriculum. Prerequisites: General prerequisites for oceanography.

689. Special Topics in... Credit 1 to 4.

Selected topics in an identified area of oceanography. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: Approval of instructor.

691. Research. Credit 1 or more each semester.

For thesis or dissertation.