To more effectively address the persistence of societal inequities due to systemic racism and colonialism, the University of Hawai‘i Sea Grant College Program (Hawai‘i Sea Grant) created a new, full-time senior leadership position and hired Dr. Beth Lenz to serve as its inaugural assistant director for diversity and community engagement.

“The Sea Grant network, which is comprised of 34 university-based programs in every coastal and Great Lakes state, Puerto Rico, and Guam, has placed increased emphasis on incorporating diverse perspectives and inclusivity. This position is one of the first of its kind in the network and will foster more equitable and sustainable resource management.”    

After completing her PhD at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Dr. Lenz spent this past year in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. as a John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellow. Only 69 recent graduates from across the country were accepted into this prestigious national fellowship, and Dr. Lenz was one of only 14 selected to serve in the Legislative Branch of government where she gained invaluable policy experience in the Natural Resources Committee’s Water, Oceans, and Wildlife (WOW) Subcommitee.

Throughout her career, Dr. Lenz has creatively and expertly blended her passion for marine science with projects designed to break down barriers to inclusion that are often inherent in the sciences. For example, while pursuing her PhD she led a two-year project blending art and science which culminated in a free public event in downtown Honolulu and inspired people of all different backgrounds to gain an interest in, and appreciation for, marine science. In her position within the Legislative Branch, she took the opportunity to support the WOW Subcommittee in implementing anti-racist strategies; expanding the diversity of witnesses invited to committee activities; and ensuring equity in legislation to empower under-resourced communities.

Lenz noted “I am excited to support Hawaiʻi Sea Grant in this new role that champions institutional change. By setting high standards that ensure accountability and incorporate all voices, we will maintain a productive and conducive program that better reflects the communities we serve. I hope to demonstrate to other programs the value and need to invest in positions like this. I look forward to returning to Hawaiʻi and developing inclusive, fun, and creative strategies that strengthen our work at the intersection of scientific research, education, policy, and management.”

Dr. Darren Lerner, director of Hawaiʻi Sea Grant, said “Though we have a number of our faculty and staff committed to improving our activities and engagement around justice, equity, diversity and inclusion (JEDI), we felt that an important next step was to create this leadership position to help us integrate JEDI throughout all of our research, extension, education, and communication activities. We are thrilled that Dr. Lenz is coming back to Hawaiʻi and joining our Sea Grant ‘ohana. We look forward to her leadership in helping us better serve and support the people of our state and region, and importantly, our Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander colleagues, friends, communities, and cultures.”

Read also on Hawai‘i Sea Grant news.

Ocean warming is predicted to cause a twofold increase in amplitude of rainfall fluctuations over the tropical Pacific according to a new study published in Communications Earth & Environment co-authored by SOEST assistant professor of oceanography, Malte Stuecker.

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the most energetic naturally occurring year-to-year variation of ocean temperature and rainfall on our planet. The irregular swings between warm and wet “El Niño” conditions in the equatorial Pacific and the cold and dry “La Niña” state influence weather conditions worldwide, with impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and economies.

Climate models predict that the difference between El Niño- and La Niña-related tropical rainfall will increase over the next 80 years, even though the temperature difference between El Niño and La Niña may change only very little in response to global warming. The recent study uncovers the reasons for this surprising fact.

Using the latest crop of climate models, researchers from the IBS Center for Climate Physics at Pusan National University, the Korea Polar Research Institute, the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and Environment and Climate Change Canada, worked together to unravel the mechanisms involved.

“All climate models show a pronounced intensification of year-to-year tropical rainfall fluctuations in response to global warming,” said lead author Dr. Kyung-Sook Yun from the IBS Center for Climate Physics. “Interestingly the year-to-year changes in ocean temperature do not show such a clear signal. Our study therefore focuses on the mechanisms that link future ocean warming to extreme rainfall in the tropical Pacific.”  

The research team found that the key to understanding this important climatic feature lies in the relationship between tropical ocean surface temperature and rainfall. There are two important aspects to consider: 1) the ocean surface temperature threshold for rainfall occurrence, and 2) the rainfall response to ocean surface temperature change, referred to as rainfall sensitivity.

“In the tropics, heavy rainfall is typically associated with thunderstorms and deep clouds shaped like anvils,” said Stuecker. “These only form once the ocean surface is warmer than approximately 27.5 degrees Celsius or 81 degrees Fahrenheit in our current climate.”

This ocean surface temperature threshold for intense tropical rainfall shifts towards a higher value in a warmer world and does not contribute directly to an increase in rainfall variability.

“However, a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture which means that when it rains, rainfall will be more intense,” said June-Yi Lee, co-lead author and professor from IBS Center for Climate Physics. “Moreover, enhanced warming of the equatorial oceans leads to upward atmospheric motion on the equator. Rising air sucks in moist air from the off-equatorial regions, which can further increase precipitation, in case other meteorological conditions for a rain event are met.”

This increase in rainfall sensitivity is the key explanation why there will be more extreme ENSO-related swings in rainfall in a warmer world.

Story courtesy of Institute for Basic Science.

SOEST scientists watched live via NASA TV as Perseverance, the most sophisticated rover NASA has ever sent to Mars, successfully landed on the red planet.

Following six years of design, testing and development, UH Mānoa scientists and graduate students who are members of NASA’s instrument teams, will now begin the next chapter in the search for signs of ancient life on Mars.

“There is a collective sigh of relief today after Perseverance made a successful journey and landing,” said Shiv Sharma, a researcher at SOEST’s Hawaiʻi Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) and member of the SuperCam instrument team. “Now the work begins to find signs of ancient life in the Jezero Crater.”

Perseverance is loaded with scientific instruments the teams will use to search for signs of ancient microbial life, characterize the planet’s geology and climate, and collect carefully selected rock and sediment samples for possible return to Earth.

The rover’s landing site, Jezero Crater, once contained a lake that scientists think is one of the most ideal places to find evidence of ancient life.

Sarah Fagents, HIGP researcher and volcanologist with the Mastcam-Z camera team, will distinguish volcanic rocks from sedimentary deposits, determine what the rock features indicate about the history of Martian volcanic eruptions and assist in determining outcrops that deserve a closer look with the other instruments.

Operating on Mars time

For at least the first 90 Martian days, Fagents will have a demanding schedule—operating on “Mars time”—as the rover roams the harsh landscape.

“The Martian day is approximately 40 minutes longer than our Earth day, so to stay in sync with the rover, our operations shifts have to move later by about 40 minutes each day,” said Fagents. “Pretty soon we will be working through the night. Though the schedule will be tough, it’s thrilling to finally be on the ground and I wouldn’t want to miss a minute of this.”

The SuperCam team will assist with detection of biosignatures—indicators that life existed in Mars’ ancient past. Now that the rover is on the Martian surface, Sharma and the team will select rock and soil targets to investigate further and then use green and infrared laser beams to identify the minerals and any organic or biological material found during these observations.

“Congratulations to NASA, and the Mars 2020 Team. Sarah, Shiv, Eleni [Ravanis], Francesca [Cary] and Evan [Kelly] will make Hawaiʻi proud as they contribute to the success of our nation’s latest exploration milestone,” said Rob Wright, HIGP director. “HIGP faculty and their students have been involved in high profile NASA planetary science missions for over 40 years, and our continual involvement, via the competitively awarded funding that they obtain, proves the outstanding quality of the scientists that UH Mānoa has.”

Read more on NASA News, KHON2, Honolulu Star-Advertiser (subscription required), Hawai’i Public Radio.

After a six-month journey, Perseverance, the most sophisticated rover NASA has ever sent to Mars, will land on the red planet. Along with people around the world, scientists and students at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa eagerly await this milestone, scheduled for February 18, 2021 around 10:30 a.m. HST. People can join the watch party for the landing online.

Watch the UH News video here.

Since being selected for the NASA instrument teams in 2014, researchers in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) worked to develop, test and refine scientific instruments to search for clues about past life on Mars. The rover’s landing site, Jezero Crater, once contained a lake that scientists think is one of the most ideal places to find evidence of ancient life. 

Watch NASA’s highlight video of the mission overview.

Built at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Perseverance is loaded with scientific instruments the teams will use to search for signs of ancient microbial life, characterize the planet’s geology and climate, and collect carefully selected rock and sediment samples for possible return to Earth by a future mission.

“There was a huge sense of relief when the launch went flawlessly in late July. Then, it was a case of waiting patiently for the spacecraft to get there,” said Sarah Fagents, a researcher at UH Mānoa’s Hawaiʻi Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) in SOEST and volcanologist with the Mastcam-Z camera team.

“It was very exciting to see the remote Raman instrument that was developed within HIGP since 1998 in the Raman spectroscopy laboratory launched successfully as a part of the Supercam instrument,” said Shiv Sharma, HIGP researcher and co-investigator on the SuperCam instrument team.  

“In October, Mars was closer to Earth than it will be for another 15 years, so it loomed large, bright and red in the night sky,” said Fagents. “I would go outside in the evenings and imagine the little spacecraft hurtling towards its destination. The past weeks have been increasingly nerve-racking as landing approaches. It’s incredibly hard to land on the surface of another planet, and a lot of people’s hopes and dreams ride on this going well!  Both myself and Shiv have been working on this mission since 2014, so we are hugely invested in its success.”

Searching for signs of ancient Martian life

Mastcam-Z is the mast-mounted multispectral stereo camera system that is equipped with a powerful zoom function. At a maximum zoom setting, the cameras could resolve a feature as small as a housefly across the length of a football field—enabling the team to identify rocks, soils and other targets that deserve a closer look by other instruments as they search for signs of ancient Martian life. 

Sharma, as a member of the SuperCam instrument team, will assist with detection of biosignatures—indicators that life existed in the distant past. The SuperCam is a suite of instruments that uses remote optical measurements and laser spectroscopy to determine fine-scale mineralogy, chemistry, and atomic and molecular composition of samples encountered on Mars. This allows the team to detect organic compounds and biosignatures from a distance on and in rocks, soils and sediment layers on Mars.

Final training and planning

During the past six months, the scientists and their graduate students Eleni Ravanis, Francesca Cary and Evan Kelly, have been extensively training in science operations, procedures and tools.

“The Mars 2020 team is thousands of people strong, and all of the different facets of operating on the surface of another planet have to work together flawlessly,” said Fagents. “As well as learning the technical nuts and bolts of how to do surface operations, we have been engaged in the strategic planning of the rover route to maximize the scientific gains of the mission.”

An unprecedented view of Mars

After landing and once instrument checks are completed, Perseverance will drop off the helicopter Ingenuity and observe as it makes its flights. This will be the first powered flight on another planet.

“After the past seven years of imagining this moment, I am super excited to see the first ever images taken on the ground at Jezero Crater,” said Fagents.

Read more on Honolulu Star-Advertiser (subscription required), KHON2, Big Island Gazette and KITV.

Just as beneficial microbes in the human gut can be affected by antibiotics, diet interventions and other disturbances, the microbiomes of other animals can also be upset. In a rare study published this week, Andrea Jani, a researcher with the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), determined the skin microbiome of an endangered frog was altered when the frogs were infected by a specific fungus, and it didn’t recover to its initial state even when the frog was cured of the infection.

All animals host symbiotic microbes—many of which are beneficial—within and on their bodies. For optimal health, this microbial community needs to remain robust and fairly stable, either by resisting change or by recovering effectively after a disruption. Some infectious diseases disrupt the microbiome, but very little is known about what happens after the host is cleared of infection.

Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) is a fungus that infects the skin of amphibians and since its discovery just over two decades ago, Bd has emerged as a global threat to amphibians.  This pathogen has affected hundreds of species and driven massive population declines, including 90 presumed species extinctions—representing the greatest known disease-induced biodiversity loss.

Jani led a team of researchers from the San Francisco Zoological Society, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, USDA Forest Service and the University of California to study the skin microbiome of the mountain yellow-legged frog (Rana muscosa), an endangered species in the Sierra Nevada in California.

“Many populations of these frogs have been wiped out by Bd infection, and the fate of remaining populations will depend largely on their ability to survive despite the presence of the pathogen,” said Jani.

Researchers and conservation managers have tested immunization as a method to protect the frogs. Frogs were taken into captivity, deliberately infected with the pathogen, and then cleared of their infections using antifungal drugs, in an attempt to train their immune systems to recognize and fight the pathogen. The frogs are then released back to the wild.

During one of these trials, the team sampled the skin microbiomes of the frogs before they were exposed to the pathogen, after they were infected, and again after they had been cleared of infection. She then used genetic sequencing technologies to identify the bacteria present.

“We found that Bd infection disturbed the frog microbiome by altering the relative abundances of core bacterial species, just as we had observed in previous research,” said Jani. “But surprisingly, when the frogs were cleared their infections, their microbiomes did not recover. In other words, removing the cause of the microbiome disturbance was not enough to bring about recovery from the disturbance.”

Establishing whether the microbiome can be resilient after disease is important to a basic understanding of microbiome dynamics, as well as the effects of infectious diseases.

Bacteria inhabiting the skin of amphibians have the potential to provide some resistance to disease conditions. Some researchers are exploring whether probiotics can protect wild amphibians, especially endangered species.

“We would hope that the microbiome can act as a ‘body guard,’ but that possibility may be compromised if a Bd infection can change the microbiome itself,” said Jani.

“Among the key unanswered questions are whether and how the disturbance to the microbiome affects the functions it provides for the host,” she added. “In our recent study, we found that greater shifts in the microbiome were linked to greater weight loss by the frogs, which suggests—but doesn’t prove—that microbiome change may have been detrimental. As with many microbiome studies, it can be very difficult to tease apart cause and effect.”

Hawai‘i is home to a wealth of endemic biodiversity, but also has one of the highest extinction rates on the planet. Although Hawai‘i has no native amphibians, infectious diseases have decimated and continue to threaten Hawaiian species, such as the iconic O‘hia and several forest bird species.

“Conservation of Hawaiian species will require understanding of how infectious diseases affect Hawaiian wildlife, including effects on associated microbiomes,” said Jani. “Hawaiian species’ microbiome sensitivity and resilience to infectious disease is not well understood, but a broad understanding of these processes in other species may provide initial insights and guide future research with Hawaiian species.”

With a wide variety of microbiome research being conducted in Hawai‘i, the UH Mānoa Center for Microbiome Analysis through Island Knowledge and Investigation (CMAIKI) connects microbiome scientists, including Jani, across the islands, furthering collaboration and facilitating new discoveries related to environmental and human health. 

Funding for this research was provided by the National Science Foundation.

Read more on Mirage News, Eurekalert, Phys.org, Scienmag, and UH News.

Coral reefs are facing threats that are driving their decline, including the planet’s warming waters. This threat hit record levels in 2015, when high temperatures were turning corals white around the globe. In particular, Kāneʻohe Bay was hit hard with nearly half of its corals bleached.

Hidden in the aftermath of this extreme event were biochemical clues as to why some corals bleached while others were resistant, information that could help reefs better weather warming waters in the future. These clues were uncovered by researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and Michigan State University (MSU), and published in a report in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

“It was kind of horrifying,” said Crawford Drury, a coral biologist at UH Mānoa’s Hawaiʻi Institute for Marine Biology (HIMB), who witnessed the 2015 bleaching event from Florida. “It’s disheartening to watch, but I try to think of it as an opportunity.”

Coral chemical signatures

The researchers discovered chemical signatures in the corals’ biology or biomarkers, that are present in organisms that were most resistant to the bleaching. This previously hidden insight could help researchers and conservationists better restore and protect reefs around the world.

“Usually, we think of biomarkers as signatures of disease, but this could be a signature of health,” said Robert Quinn, an assistant professor in MSU’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. “This could help us restore reefs with the most resistant stock.”

Corals are symbiotic communities, where coral animal cells build homes for algae that provide them energy and create their colors. When corals bleach, however, the algae are lost and leave behind bleached skeletons that are susceptible to disease and death.

This symbiosis also plays a role in a coral’s resistance and resilience to bleaching, which HIMB was in a unique position to investigate because the institute sits right next to the reef enabling experiments in real time.

Tagging individual corals

During the 2015 bleaching event, Gates Coral Lab researchers tagged individual corals to keep tabs on them. Since most of the corals recovered, they could be followed through time.

“We think about it as a biological library,” said Drury, the principal investigator with the Gates Coral Lab. “It was set up by researchers in our lab who knew it would be valuable.”

Following the bleaching, the team compared and contrasted coral samples in the wild, noting how the organisms responded and recovered, making some surprising observations along the way. For example, neighboring corals could behave completely differently in response to high temperatures. One coral could bleach completely while its neighbor maintained a healthy golden hue.

Analyzing biochemicals of corals

To understand why, Drury and HIMB postdoctoral researcher Ty Roach, the lead author of the study, sent samples to Quinn and his team, where they could thoroughly analyze the biochemicals of corals collected from this biological library using a method called metabolomics.

Quinn’s team found that corals that were resistant to bleaching had very different biochemical profiles than those that were susceptible. The distinguishing feature between these corals was found in specific lipids from their algal symbionts and the coral cells. The researchers’ metabolomic analysis detected two different lipid formulations. Bleaching-resistant corals featured algae that have what are known as saturated lipids. Susceptible corals had more unsaturated lipids. “This is not unlike the difference between oil and margarine, the latter having more saturated fat making it solid at room temperature,” said Quinn.

Having this chemical information is promising for coral conservation. When conservationists reseed corals to help restore reefs, they can potentially select more resilient specimens based on their lipid profiles.

“We can use natural resilience to better understand, support and manage coral reefs under climate change,” Drury said.

The initial project was funded by Paul G. Allen Family Foundation as part of its integrated ocean health program and coral reef portfolio that includes scientific research, policy support and innovative funding models.

Read also on UH News.

To survive the open ocean, tiny fish larvae, freshly hatched from eggs, must find food, avoid predators, and navigate ocean currents to their adult habitats. But what the larvae of most marine species experience during these great ocean odysseys has long been a mystery, until now.

Explore this research through an immersive, interactive storymap.

A team of scientists from NOAA’s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Arizona State University and elsewhere have discovered that a diverse array of marine animals find refuge in so-called ‘surface slicks’ in Hawai‘i. These ocean features create a superhighway of nursery habitat for more than 100 species of commercially and ecologically important fishes, such as mahi-mahi, jacks, and billfish. Their findings were published today in the journal Scientific Reports.

Surface slicks are meandering lines of smooth surface water formed by the convergence of ocean currents, tides, and variations in the seafloor and have long been recognized as an important part of the seascape. The traditional Hawaiian mele (song) Kona Kai `Ōpua describes slicks as Ke kai ma`oki`oki, or “the streaked sea”in the peaceful seas of Kona. Despite this historical knowledge, and scientists’ belief that slicks are important for fish, the tiny marine life that slicks contain has remained elusive.

To unravel the slicks’ secrets, the research team conducted more than 130 plankton net tows to search for larvae and other plankton inside the surface slicks and surrounding waters along the leeward coast of Hawai‘i Island, while studying ocean properties. They then combined those in-water surveys with a new technique to remotely sense slick footprints using satellites.

A diverse marine nursery

Though the slicks only covered around 8% of the ocean surface in the 380-square-mile-study area, they contained an astounding 39% of the study area’s surface-dwelling larval fish; more than 25% of its zooplankton, which the larval fish eat; and 75% of its floating organic debris such as feathers and leaves. Larval fish densities in surface slicks off West Hawaiʻi were, on average, over 7 times higher than densities in the surrounding waters.

The study showed that surface slicks function as a nursery habitat for marine larvae of at least 112 species of commercially and ecologically important fishes, as well as many other animals. These include coral reef fishes, such as jacks, triggerfish and goatfish; pelagic predators, for example mahi-mahi; deep-water fishes, such as lanternfish; and various invertebrates, such as snails, crabs, and shrimp.

“We were shocked to find larvae of so many species, and even entire families of fishes, that were only found in surface slicks,” said lead author Dr. Jonathan Whitney, marine ecologist at NOAA, former postdoctoral fellow at the Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research (JIMAR) in UH Mānoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST). “This suggests they are dependent on these essential habitats.”

An interconnected superhighway

“These ‘bioslicks’ form an interconnected superhighway of rich nursery habitat that accumulate and attract tons of young fishes, along with dense concentrations of food and shelter,” said Whitney. “The fact that surface slicks host such a large proportion of larvae, along with the resources they need to survive, tells us they are critical for the replenishment of adult fish populations.”

In addition to providing crucial nursing habitat for various species and helping maintain healthy and resilient coral reefs, slicks create foraging hotspots for larval fish predators and form a bridge between coral reef and pelagic ecosystems.

“These hotspots provide more food at the base of the food chain that amplifies energy up to top predators,” said study co-author Dr. Jamison Gove, a research oceanographer for NOAA. “This ultimately enhances fisheries and ecosystem productivity.”

Concentrating debris

While slicks may seem like havens for all tiny marine animals, there’s a hidden hazard lurking in these ocean oases: plastic debris. Within the study area, 95% of the plastic debris collected into slicks, compared with 75% of the floating organic debris. Larvae may get some shelter from plastic debris, but it comes at the cost of chemical exposure and incidental ingestion.

“Until we stop plastics from entering the ocean,” Whitney said, “the accumulation of hazardous plastic debris in these nursery habitats remains a serious threat to the biodiversity hosted here.”

Narrow slicks, broad impact

In certain areas, slicks can be dominant surface features, and the new research shows these conspicuous phenomena hold more ecological value than meets the eye.

“Our work illustrates how these oceanic features (and animals’ behavioral attraction to them) impact the entire surface community, with implications for the replenishment of adults that are important to humans for fisheries, recreation, and other ecosystem services,” said Dr. Margaret McManus, co-author, Professor and Chair of the Department of Oceanography at UH Mānoa. “These findings will have a broad impact, changing the way we think about oceanic features as pelagic nurseries for ocean fishes and invertebrates.”

Read more on UH News, Science Daily, Mirage News.

Large parts of the Sahara Desert were green thousands of years ago, evidenced by prehistoric engravings in the desert of giraffes, crocodiles and a stone-age cave painting of humans swimming. Recently, more detailed insights were gained from a combination of sediment cores extracted from the Mediterranean Sea and results from climate computer modeling, which an international research team, including SOEST oceanography researcher TobiasFriedrich, examined for the first time.

The layers of the seafloor tell the story of major environmental changes in North Africa over the past 160,000 years. The study, co-authored by Friedrich and led by Cécile Blanchet of the German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ, was published in Nature Geoscience.

Together with the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, a team of scientists organized a research cruise to the Libyan Gulf of Sirte.

“We suspected that when the Sahara Desert was green, the rivers that are presently dry would have been active and would have brought particles into the Gulf of Sirte,” said Blanchet.

Analyzing such sediments would help to better understand the timing and circumstances for the reactivation of these rivers and provide a climatic context for the development of past human populations.

Using a method called piston coring, the scientists pressed giant cylinders into the seafloor and were able to recover nearly 30-foot long columns of marine mud.

The layers of mud contain sediment particles and plant remains transported from the nearby African continent, as well as shells of microorganisms that grew in seawater, telling the story of climatic changes in the past.

“By combining the sediment analyses with results from our computer simulation, we can now precisely understand the climatic processes at work to explain the drastic changes in North African environments over the past 160,000 years,” said Friedrich.

From previous work, it was already known that several rivers episodically flowed across the region, which today is one of the driest areas on Earth. The team’s unprecedented reconstruction continuously covers the last 160,000 years. It offers a comprehensive picture of when and why there was sufficient rainfall in the Central Sahara to reactivate these rivers.

“We found that it is the slight changes in the Earth’s orbit and the waxing and waning of polar ice sheets that paced the alternation of humid phases with high precipitation and long periods of almost complete aridity,” explained Blanchet.

The fertile periods generally lasted five thousand years and humidity spread over North Africa up to the Mediterranean coast. For the people of that time, this resulted in drastic changes in living conditions, which probably led to large migratory movements in North Africa.

“With our work we have added some essential jigsaw pieces to the picture of past Saharan landscape changes that help to better understand human evolution and migration history,” said Blanchet. “The combination of sediment data with computer-simulation results was crucial to understand what controlled the succession of humid and arid phases in North Africa during the past. This is particularly important because it is expected that this region will experience intense droughts as a consequence of human-induced climate change.”

Read also on UH News.

In the early solar system, rocky planets, such as Earth, Mercury, Venus and Mars, and the Moon may have been ‘lava worlds,’with oceans of magma blanketing the surface, according to planetary scientists.  Similar magma-covered planets may orbit close to other stars and can be studied directly . Five earth sciences graduate students in the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), along with their professor, published a scientific review of this stage in planetary evolution that may determine the later atmospheric composition and potential habitability of planets like Earth.  

A critical skill for success in graduate studies and  a career in the sciences is clear and concise writing.  Courses in scientific writing such as those taught by Earth sciences professor Eric Gaidos are an opportunity for SOEST graduate students to develop their skills and get experience with publication. 

This is the fourth time students in Gaidos’s writing class have successfully published their work in an academic journal. 

“The introduction to scientific writing was invaluable and something that I was looking for,” said Kelly Truax, co-author and SOEST graduate student. “My first career was a mix of the arts and education which is a vastly different writing style. It became easier after working on this paper to understand the differences in tonality and structure. The project also offered a unique opportunity to write about subject matter outside of my research and receive feedback from all parties involved.”

This topic is particularly timely for the scientific community because NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite is surveying the entire sky searching for close-in planets around bright stars—including  “lava worlds” and the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch later this year will usher in a new era of precise measurements of those objects.

“I was interested in writing this paper on lava worlds because planetary volcanology has always been fascinating to me,” said Rebecca deGraffenried, co-author and SOEST graduate student.“It’s always fun to consider a process on Earth, and think about how that process would change under the range of conditions present on exoplanets. Particularly since I started studying Kīlauea, I’ve been interested in lava lakes. So this paper afforded the opportunity to both learn more about lava lakes in general and lava lakes on other worlds.”

Participating in a guided collaboration within the cohort is a significant feature of this approach to the course. 

“Balancing the work with classes and research gave me confidence that I could balance everything,” said Truax. “Ultimately, the camaraderie around the work and the experiences along the way were invaluable and allowed for the rare chance to write predominantly with my peers versus those later into their careers.”

Said Gaidos, “This course was an opportunity for the students not only to pursue their individual scientific interests and improve their writing skills, but also to learn to work as a team toward a common goal, and then see a tangible result from their collective effort.”

The authors on the publication in the journal Geochemistry are Keng-Hsien Chao, Rebecca deGraffenried, Mackenzie Lach, William Nelson, Kelly Truax and Eric Gaidos.