Content currently being revised.

Technical, operational, and legal aspects of sea-going research operations; planning and executing ocean research operations; practice in techniques and equipment regularly used aboard ships; familiarization with acquisition and processing of data. Prerequisite: Approval of Instructor.

Students will investigate the motivation and rationale behind ocean observing systems, and consider the relevant social, scientific, design, technology, and policy issues associated with their implementation and operation. Prerequisite: Graduate Classification.

Content currently being revised. Prerequisite: Approval of Instructor.

Observations, instruments; physical properties of seawater; property distributions; characteristics of water masses; heat budget; kinematics; gravity pressure, hydrostatics, stability. Horizontal flow; Coriolis force, geostrophy; friction, wind drift; general circulation; wave motions; tides. Prerequisites: MATH 122 or equivalent; PHYS 219.

Systematic treatment of the kinematics, dynamics, and thermodynamics of the ocean; integral con-servation relations; solenoidal versus conservative vector fields; potential vorticity; geostrophic adjustment; inertial and buoyancy modes; Bernoulli-Montgomery potential; energetics in a rotating system; available potential energy; natural temporal and spatial scales. Prerequisites: METR 435 or OCNG 608; MATH 601.

Theory and technique of model development for marine ecosystems; mathematical representation of interactions among nutrients, phytoplankton, zooplankton, fish, and the physical environment; scrutiny of biological concepts and mathematical structure of existing models. Prerequisites: OCNG 608 and 620, calculus or approval of Instructor.

Theories of simple harmonic surface gravity capillary and internal waves. Wave propagation, dispersion and energy; modifications due to rotation, variable depth and finite amplitude. Prerequisites: MATH 601; OCNG 608; or approval of Instructor.

Time-dependent motions in rotating, stratified fluids, with application to the ocean; Boussinesq and betaplane approximations; circulation, vorticity, and energy conservation; Kelvin, Poincare, and Rossby waves; tidal forcing and response; quasi-geostrophic potential vorticity; concepts of barotropic and baroclinic instability. Prerequisite: MATH 601 AND OCNG 608, or equivalent.

Mathematical theory and numerical technique of model development for ocean circulation; concepts of numerical consistency and stability; Lax equivalence theorem; commonly used finite difference schemes in ocean modeling; finite element and spectral methods as alternative means of discretisation; positivity and CFT method; relaxation and direct methods of solving elliptic equations. Prerequisite: OCNG 608.

Content currently being revised

Theories of wind-driven circulation, Sverdrup solution, frictional and inertial boundary regimes; instabilities, meanders and mesoscale features; role of stratification, topography and time dependence; Thermohaline circulation. Prerequisite: Approval of Instructor.

Critical analysis of contribution of biological science to our understanding of sea; discernible interrelationships between organisms and physicochemical parameters. Prerequisite: General prerequisites for oceanography.

Comprehensive study of marine benthos with principal emphasis upon Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea. Prerequisite: OCNG 620 or equivalent.

This seminar course will highlight areas of current research in plankton processes, microbial food web, benthic communities, fisheries, global change. Focus will be on discussion. Prerequisite: OCNG 620.

Environments, populations, and communities of the continental shelf. Interactions of the shelf with the estuaries and the deep sea; man's impact on the shelf ecosystems. Prerequisite: Approval of Instructor.

Dynamics of the lower foodweb in estuaries, rivers and lakes, detailing the role and interactions between biota and how they are influenced by abiotic processes; effects of anthropogenic activities on natural succession patterns and ecosystems productivity, elucidating the potential for new management practices. Prerequisite: Graduate Classification.

Survey of marine geology, structure and composition of ocean basins and continental margins, properties of marine sediments. Prerequisite: General prerequisites for oceanography.

Modern Sea Level, topography, measurement, meteorological and oceanographic contributions, periodic and non-periodic changes; long-term changes, determinations, Cenozoic history, Quaternary glacial-interglacial fluctuations; changes during the past century and decade; observations, natural and anthropogenic influences; estimates of future changes and societal implications. Prerequisite: Graduate Classification.

Chemical composition and properties of seawater, evaluation of salinity, pH, excess base and carbon dioxide in sea. Marine nutrients, oxygen and other dissolved gases, organic constituents; laboratory exercises on routine analyses. Prerequisites: General prerequisites for oceanography.

The physical/inorganic chemical properties of seawater and its interactions with marine minerals. Thermochemical properties of seawater, equilibrium and kinetic processes controlling ion speciation; geochemical processes at mineral surfaces; kinetics of mineral seawater interactions; applications to modeling early diagenesis. Prerequisites: OCNG 640 and/or GEOL 640.

Content currently being revised.

Stable and radioactive isotope variations in natural materials; applications to geochronometric, geothermometric and paleoclimatologic studies of the marine environment. Prerequisite: Approval of Instructor.

Origins, fates, and distribution of organic compounds in contemporary marine environments and in recent and ancient sediments. Specific analytical techniques. Prerequisite: Approval of Instructor.

Content currently being revised. Prerequisite: Approval of Instructor.

Assessment of the inputs, transfers, effects, and fates of heavy metals, radio-nuclides, petroleum hydrocarbons, chlorinated hydrocarbons and other chemicals in the ocean; models developed to predict the future viability of the ocean with particular emphasis on the Gulf of Mexico. Prerequisite: Approval of Instructor.

Geomorphology; physical oceanography and sedimentation dynamics of estuaries; chemistry of nutrients; trace metals and organic matter; major controls in estuarine productivity and interactions among estuaries, marshes, and coastal waters. Prerequisites: OCNG 620, OCNG 640.

Microbes in natural environments, including both water and sediment habitats in marine, fresh, and groundwater systems; process studies of microbial foodwebs and biogeochemical cycling; current methods and research directions. Prerequisites: OCNG 620, WFSC 414 or approval of Instructor.

Interaction between the ocean and atmosphere; major features of the two systems; heat budget, teleconnections between ocean and atmosphere, El Nino and related phenomena. Prerequisites: METR 445 or OCNG 608.

Focus on benthic processes occurring near the sedimentary-water interface of marine sediments; interdisciplinary approach in examining complex interrelationships among organisms, pore waters and sedimentary minerals in different marine environments, laboratory methods taught and applied to field case studies in different marine environments. Prerequisites: OCNG 620 and 640 or approval of Instructor.

Overview of the taxonomic diversity of marine phytoplankton and zooplankton; a comprehensive review of the physiology, ecology, trophodynamics and production of these two components of the plankton. Laboratory will include techniques for measuring primary production and biomass and methods for identification of phytoplankton and zooplankton species. Prerequisite: OCNG 620.

This course provides the basic tools and techniques to collect, process, analyze, and visualize oceanographic data sets (both temporal and spatial). The approach is multi-disciplinary, i.e., with emphasis on real-world applications to physical, biological, chemical, and geological oceanographic datasets, and includes basic instruction in the MATLAB programming language. Prerequisite: Graduate level. (STAT 601 or STAT 610 or equivalent strongly recommended).

This course provides laboratory instruction of computational techniques useful to oceanographers and necessary for successful research. Whenever possible, the labs will focus on the analysis of oceanographic-related data sets and real-world oceanographic applications. Each lab will consist of a short (15-minute) lecture that will introduce the day's topic. Prerequisite: Graduate level status (concurrent with OCNG 657 recommended

Examination of examples of implementations of models of marine ecosystems in the most influential papers; students expected to code the simpler examples and analyze them; review of important nutrient-phytoplankton-zooplankton (NPZ) models as well as other approaches to studying aquatic ecosystems. Prerequisite: OCNG 610.

Sedimentary processes (erosion, transport and deposition) from the shoreline to the deep sea and their effects on the development of estuaries, deltas, continental shelves, submarine canyons, fans, etc. Behavior of fluids and particles in boundary layers. Lab includes observations in a recirculating flume. Prerequisite: Approval of Instructor.

Particle dynamics and processes from the sea surface to the seafloor; global distribution, dynamics, and fluxes of particles from microns to millimeters (marine snow); results from sediment traps, optical sensors, particle counters applied to biogeochemical cycles in the ocean. Prerequisite: Approval of Instructor.

Geology and geophysics of the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea, Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea, Philippine Sea, and Arctic Ocean; the regional geology sediment distribution, general structure and origin of each basin. Prerequisite: OCNG 630.

Introductory course on the geophysical nature of the seafloor and marine subbottom to 1.5 seconds two-way travel time; generation, use, and interpretation of reflection and side-scan sonar records and magnetic anomalies of various marine environments and seafloor features. Prerequisites: Approval of Instructor.

History of oceans through geologic time; marine paleontological, geochemical, sedimentolgical and geophysical evidence; inferred changes in seawater properties, ocean circulation and sea level; relation to cllimate tectnic processes, atmospheric chemistry and evolution of life. Prerequisite: OCNG 630 or approval of instructor.

Provide students with EMS Strategy skills: environmental laws that may be triggered by activities; fundamental structure of an EMS; EMS alternatives; concepts in an audit; alternative dispute resolution; how effectively EMS can reduce costs and increase profits. Prerequisite: OCNG Approval of instructor. Cross-listed with MARS 675 at Texas A&M University at Galveston.

Basic concepts and mechanisms of international and U.S. Federal environmental law and policy; survey of the field and focus on case studies illustrating basic types of environmental problems. Prerequisite: Approval of instructor. Cross-listed with MARS 676 at Texas A&M University at Galveston

Presented by faculty students, staff and visiting scientists; based on recent scientific research.

Special topics to suit small group requirements. Problems not within thesis research and not covered by any other course in established curriculum. Prerequisite: General prerequisites for oceanography.

Selected topics in an identified area of oceanography. May be repeated: Credit, Varies. Prerequisite: Approval of Instructor.

For thesis or dissertation.