Oceanography

Covering more than two-thirds of the globe, the oceans represent the largest compartment of earth’s surface. Yet, due to the complexity of this three-dimensional space, the basic processes governing oceanic environments are still poorly understood. Topography, energy fluxes, chemical composition, and biogeochemical processes all influence oceanic systems. As human activity relies on and is at the mercy of oceanic processes, a detailed understanding of these processes is imperative if we want to be able to predict and utilize future challenges and opportunities imposed by oceans in a changing climate. Oceanography explores the oceans from different perspectives, by focusing on the physical, chemical, biological, and geological aspects. Naturally, there is considerable overlap between these sub-disciplines as they influence each other.

At UBC, a strong oceanography contingent explores all aspects of the discipline. Physical oceanography, dealing with the physical constraints of water movements on the oceans causing currents and waves, is covered by many working groups from field-based observation to theoretical modelling (Allen, Waterman, Laval, Lawrence, Bertram, Pawlowicz, Christensen, Hsieh). At UBC, biological Oceanography, the interactions of the oceanic environment with the life it harbors and vice versa,  also spans the whole spectrum from geobiology to plankton physiology (Crowe, Hallam, Suttle, Pakhomov, Tortell, Maldonado, Lewis, Hunt, Christensen). Finally, several labs focus on the chemical composition of ocean water (chemical Oceanography: Orians, Bertram, Hsieh) as well as the geological processes of the ocean floor (geological Oceanography: Francois, Calvert, Crowe).

 

 

Susan Allen

Professor
Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences
Departmental Site and Personal Site
Email

The Allen lab’s background is in fluid mechanics including scaling, analytics, laboratory and numerical modeling with applications in coastal oceanography, mesoscale meteorology and biogeochemical-physical interactions in the ocean. Contributions include advances in the understanding of flow over and around topography, biological-physical interactions and, the study of atmosphere buoyancy driven flows in the mountains.

 

Allan Bertram

Professor
Chemistry
Website
Email

The Bertram lab focuses on chemical and physical processes important in the atmosphere. Of special interest are atmospheric aerosol particles and the role they play in urban air pollution, climate change and atmospheric chemistry. Ultimately their goal is to better understand the role of human activity on the Earth’­s atmosphere.

 

Stephen Calvert

Professor Emeritus
Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences
Departmental Website and Personal Website
Email

The long-term goal of the Calvert lab’s research is to understand the factors responsible for the wide compositional variability of marine sediments, the controls on organic matter burial and nutrient utilization in the ocean. This information is used to interpret past oceanographic and climatic changes from sediment core records.

 

William Cheung

Professor and Director; Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Ocean Sustainability and Global Change
Institute for Oceans and Fisheries
Website and Publications
Email

The Changing Ocean Research Unit studies the effects of global climate and ocean changes on marine ecosystems, biodiversity and fisheries social-ecological systems. Led by Dr. William Cheung, the Unit assesses the biophysical and socio-economic vulnerabilities and impacts of marine climate change, and identifies mitigation and adaptation options. Its vision is “Predicting the future ocean under climate change”. Mission is to improve understanding of the past, current and future responses of marine ecosystems and fisheries to global change; and explore and inform policy-relevant solutions at local and global scales to improve human well-being and the sustainable use of ocean biodiversity and ecosystem services. Its strategies are to integrate multidisciplinary datasets and information across scales and domains, and facilitate democratization of knowledge through innovative partnerships, capacity building and outreach initiatives; and to apply and develop scenarios and models to understand the dynamics of changing oceans and ecosystems.
 

Villy Christensen

Professor
Zoology; Institute for Oceans and Fisheries
Website and Publications
Email

Christensen specializes in ecosystem modelling—in particular, data-driven ecosystem model construction. Past work has described global ocean models, studied global fish biomass and biodiversity trends in relation to seafood demand, and outlined new habitat capacity models.

 

Sean Crowe

Assistant Professor
Microbiology and Immunology; Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences
Website and Publications
Email

The overarching goal of Crowe’s research is to improve our capacity to predict and respond to global change by creating new knowledge of the earth system. To achieve this, quantitative information on microbial processes derived from insights into biological information carriers (e.g. DNA, RNA, protein) are integrated into past, present and future models of global biogeochemical cycles.

 

Roger Francois

Professor
Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences
Website
Email

Froncois’ current research interests center on the application of geochemistry to problems of paleoceanography with particular emphasis on late Quaternary paleoceanography, radiochemical approaches, carbon and nitrogen isotope geochemistry, and trace element proxies. One of the main objectives is to understand the potential impacts of climate change and human-induced disturbances on ecosystem dynamics, CO2 uptake capacity, and fish biomass.

 

Steven Hallam

Associate Professor
Microbiology
Departmental Website and Laboratory Website
Email

The Hallam lab harnesses the power of environmental genomics to explore the microbial microcosms, describing microbial community structure and function across a wide range of ecosystems. Projects share a core set of interdisciplinary tools sourced from ecology, molecular biology, genetics and computer science. Microbial community members are viewed as constituents within the ecosystem providing nutritional, energetic or detoxification services.

 

William Hsieh

Professor Emeritus
Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences
Website and Publications
Email

Hsieh works on machine learning methods and their applications to the environmental sciences, seasonal climate and extreme weather prediction and atmosphere-ocean climate dynamics. Areas of application include the El Niño-La Niña and the Arctic Oscillation, the quasi-biennial oscillation and the Madden-Julian oscillation. ML methods have been used to model vegetation indices, air quality forecasts and estimation of snow depth.

 

Brian Hunt

Assistant Professor
Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries
Website and Publications
Email

Hunt researches the structure and function of pelagic marine ecosystems and their response to climate forcing and anthropogenic impacts. Research focuses on the plankton that forms the base of all pelagic food webs and extends into the higher trophic levels through research into bottom-up and top-down forcing processes. Unifying concepts of lower trophic level dynamics can inform our understanding of the food web response to perturbation.

 

Bernard Laval

Professor
Civil Engineering
Departmental Site, Personal Site, and Publications
Email

Fluctuations in the quantity and quality of available water, due to climate change and other human influences, greatly affect Canadian life. As part of the Environmental Fluid Mechanics group, Laval focuses on the description and understanding of the physical dynamics of water bodies with the aim of developing numerical models for the prediction of the impacts of climate change and human activities on lake circulation.

 

 

Gregory Lawrence

Professor
Civil Engineering
Departmental Site and Publications
Email

Fluctuations in the quantity and quality of available water, due to climate change and other human influences, greatly affect Canadian life. As part of the Environmental Fluid Mechanics groups, Lawrence focuses on the description and understanding of the physical dynamics of water bodies with the aim of developing numerical models for the prediction of the impacts of climate change and human activities on lake circulation.

 

 

Al Lewis

Professor Emeritus
Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences
Website
Email

Dr. Lewis is interested in understanding the interactions between oceans and plankton, especially how initial dispersal and survival, water properties, food conditions and predator numbers influence zooplankton. Lewis is especially interested in the functional morphology of copepods. These characteristics, when combined with distribution patterns, provide information on the dynamics of copepod populations and their role in food webs.

 

Maria Maldonado

Associate Professor
Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences
Website and Publications
Email

Research in the Maldonado lab is directed towards understanding trace metal acquisition, metabolism and nutrition of marine bacteria and phytoplankton. Fundamental questions in microbial physiology, ecology and evolution are addressed to better understand how trace metal distribution and speciation may control global primary productivity. Laboratory physiological and biochemical investigations are complemented with field research.

 

Kristin Orians

Associate Professor
Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, & Chemistry
Website and Publications
Email

The Orians lab researches trace metals in seawater to understand biogeochemical cycles. Distributions of various elements and their isotopes, and the chemical speciation of these elements in the natural environment are investigated, providing clues as to the mechanisms that produce these patterns.

 

Evgeny Pakhomov

Professor
Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences
Website and Publications
Email

The Pakhomov Lab has a broad range of interests covering topics from species ecology, at the level from zooplankton to fish, to ecosystem structure as well as physical-biological and biochemical coupling. Recently, Pakhomov has developed interests in stable isotope ecology, in particular in techniques that use compound specific measurements to reconstruct trophic pathways in pelagic ecosystems.

 

Richard Pawlowicz

Associate Professor
Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences
Website
Email

The Pawlowicz lab is interested in understanding how the oceans work. Heat goes in (and out), fresh water and different chemicals are added (and subtracted), and resulting changes in density create pressure gradients that drive currents – which are in turn modified by the tidal effects of the moon, the spin of the earth, and friction against solid boundaries. Pawlowicz uses a mix of complex fieldwork and careful mathematical analysis to address these questions.

 

Curtis Suttle

Professor
Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences; Botany
Website and Publications
Email

The Suttle lab explores the diversity, function, and impact of viruses and microorganisms on mortality, community structure and nutrient and energy cycling in aquatic systems. Methods range from isolation and characterization of novel isolates to metagenomic analysis of whole systems.

 

Philippe Tortell

Professor
Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences; Botany
Website
Email

The Tortell Lab has broad interests in marine biogeochemical cycles. Current work focuses on the biological, chemical and physical factors regulating oceanic primary productivity and the concentration of climate-active gases. His group has developed new measurement techniques based on sea-going mass spectrometry, optical measurements and tracer-based rate incubation experiments.

 

Stephanie Waterman

Assistant Professor
Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences
Website and Publications
Email

The Waterman lab is interested in process studies related to ocean dynamics. In particular, scale interactions and interrelationships between various components of the oceanic circulation at different time and length scales, governed by different physics are considered. Further, they investigate the implications of these interactions for large-scale circulation and the ocean’s role in the climate system.