David Karl appointed member of national program advisory group

David Karl

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Gulf of Mexico program has appointed an advisory group to create a strategic vision and guide the program's development and implementation.

David M. Karl, a microbial biologist and oceanographer in the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, has been selected to serve on the 24-member advisory group.

Karl is the director of the Daniel K. Innouye Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education on the Mānoa campus.  He was elected to the NAS in 2006; in April 2013, he received NAS’ Alexander Agassiz Medal for "leadership in establishing multi-disciplinary ocean-observing systems, for decadal regime shifts in pelagic ecosystems, and for paradigm-shifting insights on biogeochemical cycles in the ocean."

The $500-million, 30-year NAS Gulf of Mexico program was established as part of the settlements of federal criminal complaints against British Petroleum and Transocean Ltd. following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion, which resulted in 11 deaths, 17 injuries, and the largest oil spill in U.S. history.  The program will focus on human health, environmental protection, and oil system safety in the Gulf of Mexico and the United States' Outer Continental Shelf, and will fund and carry out studies, projects and activities in research and development, education and training, and environmental monitoring.

Serving for one year, the NAS Gulf of Mexico program advisory group will articulate the program's mission, goals, and objectives -- including preliminary thinking about metrics to measure its impacts -- and outline how the program will operate in the first three to five years.

Read the full text of the advisory group announcement, including a list of all 24 appointees.

For more information, visit: http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/