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| NOAA
Volunteers Restore Habitat on the Patuxent River |
| On
June 12, more than 170 NOAA employees and partners participated
in the fourth annual NOAA Restoration Day held at the Jug Bay component
of the Chesapeake Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in Maryland.
Volunteers from all line offices performed a variety of restoration
activities to help restore habitat within the Patuxent River watershed.
They planted underwater bay grasses grown in 22 tanks in NOAA offices,
transplanted wild rice, performed fish seining and sampling, mapped
and removed invasive plants, and completed digital elevation mapping.
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Forty
NOAA volunteers dug up and transplanted 1,000 wild rice
plants to six different areas of Jug Bay during the NOAA
Restoration Day event. They also installed 400 feet of protective
fencing to help establish the plants. Wild rice seeds and
plants need to be transplanted and protected by fencing
to help restore the expansive stands in the Jug Bay marshes.
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Kim Couranz from the NOAA Chesapeake Bay office and
nine other NOAA Restoration Day volunteers help to measure
and identify fish captured during a fish seining activity
on the shore of the Patuxent River in Jug Bay. Twelve species
of fish were identified. Banded killifish and mummichog
were most common.
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Stu
Harris from NOAA Legislative Affairs holds a female blue
crab caught during the fish trawling activity from a small
NOAA vessel. Fish trawling was one of fourteen different
activities conducted during the Maryland NOAA Restoration
Day event.
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| Interns
Learn About NOAA, Volunteer for Restoration Week |
| This
year, over 120 students, representing the Educational Partnership
Program Undergraduate Scholars, the Educational Partnership Program
Graduate Scholars, and the Hollings Undergraduate Scholarship program,
attended a one-week orientation at the NOAA Science Center conducted
by the Office of Education for new NOAA interns. Each line office
gave informative presentations on the work of NOAA and how the various
programs integrate on research, atmospheric, marine and ocean issues.
The students also had an opportunity to speak with line office and
program representatives to assist in choosing their internship projects.
For the third year, many of the interns also volunteered for work
during NOAA’s Restoration Week.
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This
year's volunteers are (left to right) Karl Grant, Florida
A&M; Arwen Edsall, Graduate Sciences Program; Zakiya
Hoyett, Norfolk State University; Cassidy Lum, University
of Hawaii-Manoa; Brittany White, University of San Diego;
Ashley Rouser, Jackson State University; Dr. Priti Brahma,
NOAA Office of Education; Latoya Chandler, Florida A&M;
Glenn Russell, Texas A&M University-Galveston; Gregory
Oliver, University of Maryland, Eastern Shore; Elvin Efamba,
NOAA Office of Education;
Kelvin Raiford, North Carolina Central University; Jill
Pegues, NOAA Office of Education.
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| Pinning the Prince |
Capt.
Steven Barnum presented a Coastal and Geodetic Survey
pin to Monaco’s Prince Albert II at the International Hydrographic
Organization conference held in the Mediterranean seaside country
in May. The United States chart presentation and display, which
won first place at the conference, was a joint effort between the
U.S. Navy, and NOAA, and featured 200 years of hydrography in the
United States.
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From
left to right, Capt. Steven R. Barnum, director, NOAA Office
of Coast Survey; Vice Admiral Alexandros Maratos, President,
International Hydrographic Bureau; and His Serene Highness
Prince Albert II of Monaco.
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|
Employee and Team Member of the Month
for July |
| Employee of the Month
Dr.
Menghua Wang,
NESDIS |
Team Member of the Month
Tony
Jenkins,
NOAA Research
|
NOAA’s
Employee and Team Member of the Month for June are Dr.
Menghua Wang, NESDIS, and Tony
Jenkins, NOAA Research.
Dr.
Menghua Wang, an oceanographer with the NESDIS Center for
Satellite Applications and Research's Marine Ecosystems
and Climate Branch, developed an innovative approach using
shortwave infrared bands on NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer sensor to provide a significantly improved
atmospheric correction for deriving more accurate ocean
color data products. This capability will soon be incorporated
into the operational ocean color processing system in order
to deliver improved ocean color products and support to
users in NOAA and elsewhere. One of the primary challenges
in working with coastal ocean color data is that coastal
waters are typically turbid and optically complex. This
complexity leads to a spurious ocean signal that is not
removed using the standard atmospheric correction, producing
significant errors in the derived ocean color products.
Dr. Wang's research has provided a method to deal with this
problem.
Zooplankton
are a critical part of the marine food web and obtaining
zooplankton abundance data advances our understanding of
the complex interactions within an ecosystem. These data
are also an important component of integrated ecosystem
assessments. Tony Jenkins developed and successfully implemented
a method to measure this important parameter in real time.
In the past, zooplankton data has only been available in
self-recording mooring instruments or "snap shot"
samples from research vessels passing through the study
areas. Tony adapted an eight frequency zooplankton monitor
(the Tracor Acoustic Profiling Systems, or TAPS-8) and integrated
it with an acoustic and satellite-based communications system
to transmit zooplankton data from 17 meters beneath the
surface of Alaska's Bering Sea to a fisheries research scientist's
desktop computer in near real time.
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| Busch
Stadium Declared a StormReady Supporter |
| Busch
Stadium, home of the 2006 World Series Champion St. Louis Cardinals,
was declared a StormReady Supporter at an on field ceremony on June
18. Making the presentation to Joe Abernathy, vice president of
stadium operations, were St. Louis meteorologist in charge Steve
Thomas and warning coordination meteorologist Jim
Kramper.
Busch
Stadium is the first venue in Major League Baseball to achieve StormReady
Supporter status. The push to become StormReady started after a
severe thunderstorm hit the stadium right before the opening pitch
of a game on July 19, 2006. Thirty five people suffered minor injuries
from the storm. While the Cardinals already had a very good emergency
operations plan in place, they recognized the need for improvements.
Before the start of the 2007 season, they worked with Kramper on
making these improvements, thus leading to the StormReady Supporter
designation.
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The
Cardinals’ Joe Abernathy, meteorologist in charge
Steve Thomas and warning coordination meteorologist Jim
Kramper, join Fredbird, the Cardinal mascot.
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Copy? |
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