Electronic Books
Lee Karp-Boss, Emmanuel Boss, Herman Weller, James Loftin, and Jennifer Albright
This supplement to Oceanography magazine focuses on educational approaches to help engage students in learning and offers a collection of hands-on/minds-on activities for teaching physical concepts that are fundamental in oceanography. These key concepts include density, pressure, buoyancy, heat and temperature, and gravity waves. The authors focus on physical concepts for two reasons. First, students whose attraction to marine science stems from an interest in ocean organisms are typically unaware that physics is fundamental to understanding how the ocean, and all the organisms that inhabit it, function. Second, existing marine education and outreach programs tend to emphasize the biological aspects of marine sciences. While many K–12 activities focus on marine biology, comparatively few have been developed for teaching about the physical and chemical aspects of the marine environment (e.g., Ford and Smith, 2000, and a collection of activities on the Digital Library for Earth System Education Web site [DLESE; http://www.dlese.org/library/index.jsp]). The ocean provides an exciting context for science education in general and physics in particular. Using the ocean as a platform to which specific physical concepts can be related helps to provide the environmental relevance that science students are often seeking.
IEO
Semi-enclosed and bounded by three continents, the Mediterranean sea is a region highly vulnerable to human activities, i.e.: the population surge along the coasts, the tourism pressure, the maritime traffic, the agriculture and the fishery exploitation, all have a potential impact on the Mediterranean environment. In addition, effective initiatives against the Global Climate Change need to be attempted in order to preserve our marine environment and to achieve a sustainable development of its resources. Prevention and adaptation to this new threat must be based on the rigorous and scientific knowledge accomplished through the systematic and continuous observation of the sea, and through the collection of multidisciplinary time-series and the subsequent analysis. This report responds to this necessity. The main goals of the Instituto Español de Oceanografía (IEO) are to generate scientific knowledge, as well as to assess and to inform the public about the state of the sea. The IEO is primary focussed on the study of the variety of phenomena influencing spanish coasts, including the process of Climate Change. To meet these objectives, a large set of actions have been planned. Some of them are already being implemented, such as a multidisciplinary observation system in the shelf and continental slope waters, or periodic scientific reports dealing with the detection and quantification of Climate Change effects and of other possible environmental impacts. The present report is the first of a series of future contributions. Besides the IEO, other Spanish institutions such as the ICM (CSIC), Puertos del Estado (PE), the IMEDEA (CSIC), the UMA, the UIB and the INM, involved in the monitoring, analysis and modelling of the Mediterranean sea, have also participated in it. The results show clear evidences of the effect of Climate Change in the physical properties of the mediterranean waters since 1948; in particular, the temperature and salinity increase of the deep waters, the accelerated rise of sea level since the early 1990s, and the air and sea surface temperature increase during the second half of the XX centurys
Prof. Michael E. Ritter
Michael E. Ritter is Professor of Geography/Geology at University of Wisconsin. The book is one of the first, totally online physical geography learning environments. The Physical Environment combines text, images, audio and video programs to deliver the subject matter content. A multimedia online environment requires that you interact with the content in new and different ways.
Prof. Michael Pidwirny
PhysicalGeography.net is an educational web portal that focuses on a specific area knowledge known as Physical Geography. Physical Geography is a sub-discipline of two much larger fields of study - Geography and Earth Sciences. The main purpose of Physical Geography is to explain the spatial characteristics of the various natural phenomena that exist in Earth's hydrosphere, biosphere, atmosphere, and lithosphere.
Prof. Robert Stewart
Prof. Robert Stewart has written a textbook for upper-division college students and new graduate students in oceanography, meteorology, and ocean engineering (english and both html and pdf formats).
Bruce A. Warren and Carl Wunsch (Editors)
Evolution of Physical Oceanography was created to mark the career of Henry M. Stommel, the leading physical oceanographer of the 20th Century and a longtime MIT faculty member. The authors of the different chapters were asked to describe the evolution of their subject over the history of physical oceanography, and to provide a survey of the state-of-the-art of their subject as of 1980. Many of the chapters in this textbook are still up-to-date descriptions of active scientific fields, and all of them are important historical records. This textbook is made available courtesy of The MIT Press.
H. U. Sverdrup, Martin W. Johnson and Richard H. Fleming
The famous book written by Prof. H.U Sverdrup edited in 1942 is now free available through the web.
Prof. M. Tomczak
Matthias Tomczak is Professor of Oceanography at the School of Chemistry, Physics and Earth Sciences (Flinders University of South Australia). This is the official European mirror of his home site. You will find his lecture notes and exercices on Physical Oceanography as well as some very interesting web tools (calculators of seawater properties, calendar systems, etc.) in both English and Spanish languages.