Research
As of 2008, RSMAS receives $50 million in annual external research funding. Laboratories at Virginia Key are equipped with specialized instruments including a salt-water wave tank, the five-tank Conditioning and Spawning Systems, multi-tank Aplysia Culture Laboratory, Controlled Corals Climate Tanks, and DNA analysis equipment. The Richmond Campus' CSTARS provides RSMAS with a near-real-time weather satellite downlink. The Rosenstiel School also operates the Bimini Biological Field Station, an array of oceanographic high-frequency radar along the US east coast, and the Bermuda aerosol observatory. Since 1977, the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies (CIMAS), a scientific partnership between UM and the NOAA, has been studying climate change, air-sea interactions and coastal ecology.
Research projects at RSMAS are in the domain of atmospheric and marine sciences and include:
- Coral reef research, focusing on corals survival in a new climate conditions; coral reef protection
- Field programs evaluating trace gas chemistry and transport
- The aquaculture program
- Climate change modeling
- Tropical weather, climate, and atmospheric/oceanic circulations
- Air-sea interactions research through buoys, remote sensing, analysis in situ, a wave tank laboratory, numerical modeling;
- Volcanoes in the Pacific, Everglades water level measurements and subsidence through satellite images
- Studies of the coastal quality and the impact on human health.
RSMAS's Marine Affairs & Policy Division also conducts archaeological and paleontological research at Little Salt Spring in Sarasota County. The site was donated to the University of Miami in 1982. RSMAS also hosts the National Center for Coral Reef Research (NCORE), which works to understand, conserve and manage coral reefs worldwide.
RSMAS has focused significant resources to studying the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and its long term environmental effect. The school is an active member of the State of Florida's Oil Spill Academic Task Force that works with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection on spill issues. In the summer of 2010, a CIMAS team working with the research vessel Walton Smith was able to document a 23-mile (37 km) long oil plume extending toward the Dry Tortugas.
The Corporación Andina de Fomento has awarded a grant to RSMAS to conduct a feasibility study for a new experimental water tunnel facility located in Panama. The proposed Water Tunnel of the Americas at the Panama Canal (WTAPC) would be the largest water tunnel facility in the world. The facility would be similar to a wind tunnel, but would flow water at high velocity around the objects being studied.
The quality of the school is evaluated through peer-reviewed competition for faculty research grants. In addition, each year, the National Science Foundation conduct a nation-wide student competition for Graduate Research Award Fellowship, and in 2010, five RSMAS students received such awards with two additional honorable mentions.
Read more about this topic: Rosenstiel School Of Marine And Atmospheric Science
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