photo courtesy of MBARI

Assignment

Information

  The Marine Environment

Ocea 101, Winter 2007

• If you need a refresher on doing research in the Science Library, an excellent place to start is the NetTrail site.
• You can also look at the Ocean Sciences Library Web Site
• Finally, check out the Wikipedia entry for Oceanography, which provides access to a variety of interesting topics on the web.

• At the bottom of this page there's a list of some potential topics (and also a list of the most "popular" topics chosen....you might want to avoid those ones if you don't want to present the same thing as everyone else!

Term Paper: A 10 (+ or - 2) page synthesis (double spaced) summarizing 3-5 original journal articles on a well defined and narrowly focused topic. The purpose is to have you gain familiarity with looking up original scientific research articles on a particular topic and presenting a synthesis of 3 such articles on a topic dealing with the oceans. Appropriate figures would help. The figures should be mentioned and discussed in the text of your paper (in other words, don't include any figures or illustrations that aren't used in your discussion). Figures should have captions and be referred to and discussed in the text.

An example of a good subject would be El Nino - a comparison of recent El Nino events. Another example would be the use of "sound channels" by whales to vocalized across great distances--an example of a topic which does not incorporate enough ocean sciences would be the evolutionalry development of whale vocalizations (because it focuses on evolution and physiology).

Your paper should have a clear focus, and that focus should be obvious to the reader early on.

Possible focuses might be: 1) To describe the possibility of using satellites to measure salinity, including theories, applications, and current research, or 2) To argue that human pollutants are destroying coral reefs. These would be a good way to narrow down a much broader topic, such as 1A) how satellites are used in oceanography, or 2A) the general decline of coral reefs.

The paper topic should have greater depth than the coverage that that topic receives in class.

The paper should include the writer's own conclusions and not be merely a book report. Make it interesting!

Due date: Week 9, February 25 (in your discussion section).

References: the authors, title, journal, volume and page numbers of the 3 articles. Example: Martin, J.H., S.E. Fitzwater and M.R. Gordon (1990) Iron deficiency limits phytoplankton growth in Antarctic waters. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Vol. 4, pp. 5-12.

The best way to proceed is to discuss possible topics with your TA or the Instructor and carry out a library search. Or go browse through appropriate recommended journals to select a topic that appears interesting. A particularly good journal you might browse through for ideas is Limnology and Oceanography (link). Both Science (link) and Nature (link) have very good websites, as well, and often cover interesting topics in Oceanography.

Presentations:You will present an overview of the termpaper to the rest of your section (with A/V materials), with an expected length of 5 minutes + 2 minutes for questions, or whatever time period your TA gives you (the timing is dependent on how many students are in each section). For your presentation, we will provide access to a computer projector for Powerpoint. For each discussion section, you (the students) will vote on the most interesting presentation. The best presentation from each discussion section will then be given on the last day of class, with additional time (15 minutes). The class will vote again, and prizes will be awarded.

Due date: Last 3 weeks of class (in your discussion section).

Evaluations: Your grade for the term paper and oral presentation will be determined by the TA and the instructor. The additional voting by the class will not be used for the determination of your grades.