Science DiplomacyĪfter Lubchenco stepped down from her role at NOAA in 2014, she remained involved in the world of international environmental policy as a science envoy for two years on behalf of the U.S.
The result is a concentration of hypoxia that makes the waters off Cape Perpetua more prone to dead zones than those of Cape Foulweather. Cape Perpetua’s wider shelf creates a gyre that circulates and concentrates the nutrient-rich plankton blooms and other conditions that are generated by upwelling. This difference in shelf size is important not just for whale watching. "Down near Cape Perpetua, the shelf is much wider.” “The shelf here is very narrow so when people are whale watching, the whales are coming in nice and close to the shore," Lubchenco said. Here near Cape Foulweather, those larger dynamics get hyper-local. The storm was later upgraded to hurricane status. NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco aboard the agency's Hurricane Hunter aircraft during Tropical Storm Issac, 2012. This reduced-oxygen condition is known as "hypoxia" and, since the early 2000s, has resulted in local dead zones. “Bacteria begin to decompose them, and the bacteria use up all the oxygen in the water.” “But if there’s too much nutrient, the herbivores that would naturally eat those microscopic plants can't keep up, and a lot of those plants begin to die,” she said. “That cold, nutrient-rich upwelling normally produces the really wonderful rich fisheries that we have along the coast here.” “Normally, as the wind blows along the coast, it pushes surface water away from the coast because the earth is rotating,” Lubchenco explains. As ocean and land temperatures rise, wind patterns change, increasing the upwelling of nutrient-rich water and disrupting the ocean ecosystem. One example is the appearance of “dead zones” off the Oregon Coast. “The most likely explanation for why we're seeing this are changes that are related to climate change,” Lubchenco said. Those findings indicate that sea levels are rising and that the world’s oceans are becoming warmer and more acidic, and contain less oxygen. “There are very few places in the world that have the long-term data that we do.”ĭata collected here and at many other sites allow researchers like Lubchenco to explore why things are changing, as well as differentiate between those patterns that are just routine fluctuations and others that suggest something really abnormal is happening.
“This place has been such a phenomenal laboratory,” Lubchenco said of the Oregon Coast. Here, nestled between the vivid, life-filled tide pools are a collection of small wire-mesh boxes and colored knobs that track environmental changes occurring at exact locations over time. It’s also where study sites that were set up during the couple’s early years at OSU are now providing important long-term data. The intertidal zone on this small point of land supplies the kids with the endless delights of chasing hermit crabs and feeling the squishy tentacles of anemones close around tiny fingers. On this day, Menge and Lubchenco were tide-pooling with their grandchildren near Cape Foulweather.
Lubchenco and her husband, fellow-OSU marine ecologist Bruce Menge, moved to Oregon from the East Coast 40 years ago. “I’ve started focusing not just on discovering how ocean ecosystems work," she said, "but tracking how they're changing and thinking about how can we do a better job of managing our activities that are affecting the oceans that provide so many things that we want and need.” John Holdren and Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen about the PB Deepwater Horizon disaster, 2010. Jane Lubchenco in her role as NOAA chief confers with President Barack Obama, Science Advisor Dr. The post gave her influence on the policies that affect the environments she’s been exploring throughout her career.ĭr. That’s when President Barack Obama tapped Lubchenco to head up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "Oregon Field Guide" first toured the tide pools of Boiler Bay with the eminent marine ecologist in 2003.īy 2009, Lubchenco had ventured into much deeper waters.