Lou Codispoti Lab and Projects (back to HPL Faculty)
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Vince Kelly and Lou Codispoti
L.A. Codispoti and Vince Kelly have a wide range of research interests that include oceanic nitrogen and carbon cycling, descriptive physical oceanography, chemical instrumentation, nutrient budgets, autonomous nutrient sampling and processing, global change, the Arctic Ocean, and the processes that influence the flux of nitrous oxide, an important atmospheric trace gas, from the ocean to the atmosphere. A recent project involves the design and implementation of a system that can autonomously collect, process, telemeter, and display nutrient, temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll, and turbidity data. This system (AIMS) can also collect samples by remote command or upon sensing of an “event” by the autonomous instruments.
Under the aegis of this Virginia Sea Grant project, we have collected high resolution total nitrogen and total phosphorus data at the Chesapeake Bay Mouth, and combined them with temperature, salinity and current data collected by colleagues at Old Dominion University to see if it is possible to calculate nutrient budgets for Chesapeake Bay, at reasonable cost, based on such data or whether any such effort would be defeated by high frequency variability. We have found that conditions are chaotic during spring tides, but more coherent during neap tides, and we conclude that it may indeed be possible to use Bay Mouth data to help understand whether efforts to abate excessive nutrient loads into the Chesapeake Bay are working. Our results have been summarized in a presentation at a national estuaries meeting.
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Autonomous
Nutrient Samplers: In collaboration with Dr. Pat Glibert and other Horn Point Laboratory colleagues, we have been collecting time-series nitrate and phosphate data from the Choptank and Pocomoke rivers in a collaborative NOAA funded study designed to better understand the factors that lead to harmful algal blooms (HABs). Our focus has been on obtaining detailed time-series data using robotic Iin situ nutrient samplers, mounted on Chesapeake Observing System Buoys. Such data have revealed significant tidal and rainfall induced variability that would be difficult to see using normal sampling procedures. We think that the short-term phosphate spikes that we see after some rainfall events may be important "trigger" that deserve particular attention as we try to understand the conditions that lead to blooms of toxic algae. |
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| Studies
of the Arctic Ocean We have two projects that involve the Arctic Ocean, all of which are related to our interest in global change. The first involves establishing an environmental observatory on Little Diomede Island in the Bering Strait. This is an interesting part of the world smack dab in the middle of the Pacific waters that enter the Arctic Ocean, and the site of a historic and ongoing native village where hunting is still a way of life. |
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Sometimes, working on Little Diomede can demand our best efforts!
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