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ORD Scientist wins Major Award
(May, 2003) Science to Achieve Results (STAR) grantee Dr. Hans Paerl has received the 2003 G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award
from the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography. The award has been presented each year since 1982 to recognize excellence in oceanography and limnology (the study of fresh waters). Recipients of the award are scientists who have made considerable contributions to the knowledge in these areas and whose future work promises a continuing legacy of scientific excellence.
The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill researcher was honored by the Association at its February annual meeting for contributing to the understanding of microscopic life in an aquatic environment; documenting linkages between atmospheric deposition of nitrogen, coastal eutrophication and harmful algal blooms; and crossing traditional research boundaries in freshwater, estuarine, and marine ecosystems.
Dr. Paerl works at the University's Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, N.C., where he is the Kenan professor of marine and environmental sciences. Much of Dr. Paerl's attention is focused on the rivers, estuaries, and sounds of North Carolina, such as the Neuse River and Pamlico Sound, though he has also conducted studies on a wide variety of aquatic ecosystems around the globe.
To date, Dr. Paerl has received five STAR grants. As a grantee with the STAR Estuarine and Great Lakes Environmental (EaGLe) Indicators Program, Dr. Paerl is working with collaborators to develop and test indicators of ecological condition across four estuarine systems on the Atlantic coast. The present lack of established regional and national bio-indicators, despite extensive monitoring at thousands of sites nationwide and specific community efforts to develop bio-indicators, is testimony to the magnitude and complexity of the task ahead. The Chesapeake Bay, Albemarle-Pamlico Sound in North Carolina, Parker River/Plum Island in Massachusetts, and North River Inlet in South Carolina are four different but representative systems where they will assess indicators for intertidal marshes (Plum Island and North Inlet), plankton-dominated systems (Chesapeake Bay and Pamlico Sound), and seagrass-dominated systems (portions of the Chesapeake Bay and Pamlico Sound). Dr. Paerl's research project, known as the Atlantic Coast Environmental Indicators Consortium, seeks to test the ability of these indicators to gauge ecosystem health and detect trends resulting from both natural variability and human stresses.
Dr. Paerl explains that such features as the pigment content of algae, the morphology of plant cell walls, and the diversity and interactions of estuarine food webs can indicate ecological conditions. Further, he says, such measures may be informative not only at a single site such as the Chesapeake Bay, but nationwide. "We hope at the end to have an approach that works in estuaries across the country," he said, noting that joint funding from NASA will help the investigators access low-altitude, twin-engine aircraft; higher flying ER-2s (NASA's version of the U-2); and satellite-based remote sensing to "scale up" findings and assess ecological health in whole systems.
In addition to research being done at the University of North Carolina by Dr. Paerl and a colleague, Richard A. Luettich, the collaborators in the EaGLe project are Lawrence W. Harding Jr., Edward D. Houde, William C. Boicourt, and Michael R. Roman of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science; James T. Morris and Raymond Torres of the University of South Carolina Departments of Biology and Geology; James L. Pinckney of Texas A & M University; Charles Hopkinson of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, MA; and Mark Fonseca, Judson Kenworthy, and Donald Field at the NOAA Laboratory in Beaufort, NC.
Dr. Paerl, the principal investigator for the ecological indicators project, received his doctorate in ecology-limnology from the University of California-Davis in 1973 and took his post at the University of North Carolina in 1978. He has been involved in more than 220 scientific publications. Dr. Paerl has served on the Florida Bay Scientific Oversight Expert Panel and an expert advisory panel on Potomac River blue-green algal blooms. He has been the keynote lecturer at various international symposia, including most recently, the International Symposium on Estuarine Research at the Hong Kong Technical University in May 2002 and the International Symposium for Aquatic Microbial Ecology in Taormina, Sicily, in October 2002.
For more information, contact Estella Waldman at Waldman.Estella@epa.gov.