Bill Boicourt

William C. Boicourt

Professor of Oceanography

University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science

Horn Point Laboratory

2020 Horns Point Road

Cambridge, MD 21613

Tel. 410-221-8426

Fax: 410-221-8490

Email: Boicourt@hpl.umces.edu

Research Interests:

Bill Boicourt’s primary research involves the physics of estuarine and continental shelf circulations, especially the interaction between the estuary and shelf and the buoyancy-driven motions inherent in this process. Many of these interests have been motivated by biological questions such as the role of transport in planktonic recruitment, circulation controls in the formation of phytoplankton blooms, and coastal hypoxia. Instrumentation has been a long-term interest, not only for resolving the small time and space scales of the coastal ocean, but also for providing indications of long-term changes in the coastal ecosystem. Observing systems have been a focus for the past 16 years, having started CBOS with two moorings in the upper Bay in 1990. In 2002, Boicourt was a Principal Investigator with Carolyn Thoroughgood and Scott Glenn starting the Middle Atlantic Coastal Ocean Observing Regional Association (MACOORA).

Recent Activities:

Ongoing research projects involve estuarine circulation, hydraulic processes, and estuarine and river plumes. We will be going to the Gulf of Mexico again this summer to chase the Mississippi River plume and examine the “Dead Zone” of hypoxic water underneath the Louisiana Coastal Current. We will also go to the Middle Atlantic Bight continental shelf with a group from the Universities of Delaware and Maryland to examine the transport and recruitment of blue crab larvae to the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays.