CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research
Past Seminars

Friday 12 March 2004, 11.30am (Tas time)

CSIRO Auditorium, Hobart

Cheryl Greengrove
Associate Professor of Geosciences,
University of Washington, Tacoma

Oceanographic overview of Barkley and Clayoquot Sounds,
British Columbia, Canada

Barkley and Clayoquot Sounds are the two southernmost inlets on the west coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. Each consists of a series of glacially formed fjords, with some deep inner basins that are intermittently anoxic.

The original impetus for this study grew out of a CAREER proposal to NSF by Rick Keil to study bacterial growth and diversity in the sediments and water of both oxic and anoxic basins. These fjords serve as natural oxic and anoxic laboratories with similar forcing conditions and inputs. The second objective of this proposal was to develop an undergraduate apprenticeship program that would involve students from multiple institutions in oceanographic research. Undergraduate students from the University of Washington, Seattle (UWS), University of Washington, Tacoma (UWT) and the Evergreen State College (ESC), are participating in this program on various projects, in addition to graduate students from UWS. Results will be presented for the first 4 years of the 5 year program and represent a “work-in-progress”.

The study has evolved over time to include a general descriptive characterisation of Barkley and Clayoquot Sounds’ hydrographic conditions, phytoplankton diversity and abundance distribution surveys, evaluation of sediment organic carbon preservation relative to grain size surface area and terrestrial and marine end member inputs, the development of a new bacterial growth and diversity determination technique, in addition to the original plans to look at bacteria distribution and growth in water and sediments in these two, oxic and anoxic, regimes. Plans for the 2004 field season will also be discussed.

 

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