Candace A. Oviatt is an ecologist at the University of Rhode Island known for research into coastal marine ecosystems with a particular focus on

Narragansett Bay Narragansett Bay is a bay and estuary on the north side of Rhode Island Sound covering , of which is in Rhode Island. The bay forms New England's largest estuary, which functions as an expansive natural harbor and includes a small archipelago. Sma ...

, Rhode Island.

Education and career

Oviatt obtained a B.S. in biology from

Bates College Bates College () is a private liberal arts college in Lewiston, Maine. Anchored by the Historic Quad, the campus of Bates totals with a small urban campus which includes 33 Victorian Houses as some of the dormitories. It maintains of nature p ...

in 1961. In 1967, she became the first woman to get a Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Oceanography at the

University of Rhode Island The University of Rhode Island (URI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Kingston, Rhode Island, United States. It is the flagship public research as well as the land-grant university of the state of Rhode Island ...

. Oviatt's Ph.D. dissertation examined how light impacted the movement of starfish which was published in the journal ''Behavior'' in 1969. After graduate school, Oviatt took a research position at the Harvard School of Public Health. Following that period, she was a research associate at the University of Rhode Island where she ultimately became a professor and the director of the University of Rhode Island's Marine Ecosystems Research Lab. In 1969, Oviatt began a long-standing research partnership with Scott W. Nixon which began when they simultaneously established labs in the Fish Building on the Graduate School of Oceanography campus. In 2016, the University of Rhode Island honored Oviatt by inducting her into its Lifetime Service Society. Oviatt served as president of Estuarine Research Foundation, now the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation, from 1995 to 1997. As of 2020, Oviatt is on the Rhode Island Natural History Survey's board of advisors.

Research

While at Harvard, Oviatt examined the potential impact of disposing burned municipal waste at sea by focusing on its impact on clams, fish, and flounder eggs. Once she returned to Rhode Island, she worked with Scott Nixon on a large scale assessment of the productivity of a New England salt marsh in a paper which combined measured data and modeled impacts of changes in temperature and sewage additions. Following this work, Oviatt began a series of research projects within Narragansett Bay including investigations into sediment loading and historical fish and shellfish information. By comparing historical data and new research, Oviatt's research has shown that nutrient levels have decreased within Narragansett Bay with a concurrent increase in the clarity of the water. A turning point in public interest in Narragansett Bay came in 2003 when a large number of fish died due to hypoxia, an event that encouraged the public to take an interest in the region's water quality. Following the fish kill event, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management set a goal to reduce nitrogen inputs into Narragansett Bay by 50% when comparing levels from 1995-1996 to 2013-2014, a goal that was met by 2015. Oviatt's research has tracked long term changes in the water quality of the Bay after the establishment of new regulations regarding discharge from sewage plant. During a 2017 symposium in which the question became whether the nutrient levels were too low, Oviatt noted that Narragansett Bay is always changing but "it's not a dead bay" because there are increases in some fish species concurrent with the decreases in crustaceans. Oviatt also played a critical role in establishing the Marine Ecosystem Research Lab (MERL) at the University of Rhode Island in 1976 with Scott Nixon and Michael Pilson. This laboratory enabled them to conduct large scale experiments with enclosed tanks (

mesocosm thumb , Diagram of a small form closed system mesocosm. A mesocosm (''meso-'' or 'medium' and ''-cosm'' 'world') is any outdoor experimental system that examines the natural environment under controlled conditions. In this way mesocosm studie ...

s), thereby reproducing conditions within Narragansett Bay in a controlled manner. Using the MERL tanks, Oviatt examined the impact of adding high concentrations of nutrients to a closed system and the reverse situation with nutrients present in limiting quantities. Other experiments included quantifying the bounds of primary production in Narragansett Bay and the fate of sewage added to the coastal environment. More recently, Oviatt has used historical data to project what may happen to biological communities under future climate scenarios and how hurricanes alter the flux of nutrients into a region and thereby cause increased amounts of the seaweed

Sargassum ''Sargassum'' is a genus of brown (class Phaeophyceae) macroalgae ( seaweed) in the order Fucales. Numerous species are distributed throughout the temperate and tropical oceans of the world, where they generally inhabit shallow water and coral ...

in the Virgin Islands. In 2015, Oviatt received the B.H. Ketchum Award from

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI, acronym pronounced ) is a private, nonprofit research and higher education facility dedicated to the study of marine science and engineering. Established in 1930 in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, it i ...

and was recognized for:

Awards

* Bostwick H. Ketchum Award from

(2015) * Lifetime Achievement Award, Save the Bay (2016) * University of Rhode Island Lifetime Service (2016)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Oviatt, Candace University of Rhode Island faculty University of Rhode Island alumni Bates College alumni American ecologists Women ecologists Living people Year of birth missing (living people)