Wei-Jun Cai has been appointed the Mary A.S. Lighthipe Chair of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, effective Sept. 1.

Named professor

Wei-Jun Cai named Mary A.S. Lighthipe Chair of Earth, Ocean, and Environment

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9:53 a.m., Aug. 17, 2015--The University of Delaware’s Wei-Jun Cai has been named the Mary A.S. Lighthipe Professor of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, effective Sept. 1.

Cai, who joined the UD faculty in 2013, is a professor of oceanography in the School of Marine Science and Policy, which is housed in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment

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An expert in marine chemistry, his research centers on understanding carbon’s movement through estuaries and coastal ocean waters. This is an important research area as carbon is used to measure rates of biological processes, and carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, which regulates the earth’s climate system. Yet, scientific understanding of how carbon flows through the earth system is limited.

Prior to joining UD, Cai spent 18 years at the University of Georgia. There he studied how carbon dioxide and oxygen levels varied with physical and biological processes in estuarine and continental shelf waters in the U.S. Southeast and the Gulf of Mexico, as well as in the coastal seas of China. 

Cai’s carbon dioxide research is closely linked to climate change research due to the increase of anthropogenic carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the ocean. His work has been published in Science, Nature and Nature Geosciences, among other journals.

A 2011 paper in Nature Geosciences, for example, demonstrated the existence of enhanced acidification in the hypoxic bottom waters (the so-called low oxygen dead-zone) due to carbon dioxide produced by decomposing organic carbon from nutrient loaded waters, like those of the Mississippi River, Gulf of Mexico and Changjiang/East China Sea. 

In 2010, Cai and colleagues from Canada, China, Japan, Korea and the U.S. were among the first to report a dramatic change in the Arctic Ocean’s carbon dioxide system when sea-ice retreated into the basin in the journal Science.

Following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Cai identified significant changes in the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in the Gulf of Mexico bottom waters. This led Cai to develop a method for identifying the impact oil – and the carbon inherently contained within it – has on ocean acidification levels. As the organic carbon from the oil combines with existing oxygen in the water, it creates more carbon dioxide, a known contributor to ocean acidification.

At UD, Cai’s current research explores how changes in land use and energy consumption elevate carbon and nutrient levels in estuaries and the coastal ocean. These increased levels cause the ocean to be more acidic, and Cai, along with several UD colleagues, is interested in understanding the biogeochemical processes that contribute to coastal ocean acidification in bottom waters and sediments. 

While bottom sediments have the potential to trap and store this excess carbon, scientists want to understand the effect on bottom dwelling organisms, since increasingly acidic waters can cause corals and other organisms whose shells are calcified to deteriorate.

“Dr. Cai is a leading scientist in marine carbon chemistry and implications for ocean acidification and climate variability. I am pleased to see him receive this well-deserved recognition for his important work,” said Mark Moline, director of CEOE’s School of Marine Science and Policy.

Wei-Jun Cai’s research team recently spent 34 days at sea studying acidification in the East Coast, from Miami to the Canadian waters of the Scotian Shelf, as part of a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-funded collaboration with colleagues from University of New Hampshire, Princeton and Old Dominion. 

Early results, he said, indicate that the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic waters are more vulnerable to ocean acidification compared to waters in the Southeast and Gulf of Mexico areas. 

Other collaborations with UD colleagues include examining how corals respond to ocean acidification, and using underwater sensors to study carbon and oxygen levels and their impacts on the environments in the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays.

Cai, who also is affiliated with UD’s Delaware Environmental Institute (DENIN), is a member of the American Geophysical Union, American Society of Limnology and Oceanography, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society and Geological Society of America.

The author or co-author of over 100 journal articles, his work is supported by the National Aeronautic and Space Administration, NOAA, Gulf of Mexico Research Initiatives, National Science Foundation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and more.

Cai earned a bachelor of science in marine chemistry from Xiamen University (XMU), Xiamen, China, and a master of science in marine chemistry from Shandong College of Oceanography. He completed his doctoral degree in oceanography from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego, and he was a post-doctoral fellow at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts.

For more than a decade, Cai has been part of a team that annually teaches Advanced Chemical Oceanography at XMU, which has a dual degree program in oceanography with UD’s CEOE.

About the professorship

The Lighthipe professorship honors Mary A.S. Lighthipe, a native of Sussex County with a longtime interest in the inland bays of Delaware. Lighthipe established the named professorship in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment to recognize the college’s research and teaching concerning the waters of and around Delaware.

Article by Karen B. Roberts

Photo by Kathy F. Atkinson

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