Marcia McNutt

National Academy of Sciences

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David W. Caress

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

Kelsey Jordahl

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

Alain Bonneville

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

S. Kruse

University of South Florida

H. W. Menard

Scripps Institution of Oceanography

L. H. Royden

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Kathleen Hall Jamieson

University of Pennsylvania

M. G. Kogan

P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Cecily J. Wolfe

United States Geological Survey

Yu Jin

Peking University

Cooperative Institutions

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

University of California, San Diego

Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Harvard University

University of California, Berkeley

Stanford University

United States Geological Survey

Columbia University

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Planetary Science Institute

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Economics of public safety

Science (2016)

Marcia McNutt

By now, the tragic saga of the lead-contaminated drinking water in Flint, Michigan, is well known. Unlike some disasters, this one was not inevitable, and there were many warning signs that could have halted it much sooner. In the developed world, citizens have come to trust that basic public services such as water, power, and sanitation will be provided, for a fee, safely and reliably. Therefore, Flint is not just a nightmare for its 100,000 residents, because it causes all citizens to question whether public officials, who are entrusted with providing essential services, have health and welfare in mind. With criminal investigation of the Flint crisis now under way, my focus is not on assigning blame but on how to prevent a tragedy like this from happening again.

Nightmare

Blame

Tragedy (event)

Happening

10.1126/science.aaf4014

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Citations (1)

Regional compensation of the Greater Caucasus mountains based on an analysis of Bouguer gravity data

Earth and Planetary Science Letters (1990)

C. Ruppel Marcia McNutt

Eurasian Plate

Collision zone

continental collision

10.1016/0012-821x(90)90037-x

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Citations (36)

Song for an Ocean Planet

Science (2001)

Marcia McNutt

Great Waters An Atlantic Passage. Deborah Cramer. Norton, New York, 2001. 442 pp. $27.95, C$39.99. ISBN 0-393-02019-3. Cramer uses an ocean voyage as the framework for a natural history of the Atlantic that incorporates findings by oceanographers, geologists, biologists, and chemists. Her account highlights current threats to the sea's environment and productivity.

10.1126/science.1065414

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The Geoid: effect of compensated topography and uncompensated oceanic trenches

Geophysical Research Letters (1982)

Clement G. Chase Marcia McNutt

The geoid is becoming increasingly important in interpretation of global tectonics. Most of the topography of the earth is isostatically compensated, so removal of its effect from the geoid is appropriate before tectonic modeling. The oceanic trenches, however, are dynamically depressed features and cannot be isostatically compensated in the classical way. Continental topography compensated at 35 km gives intracontinental geoidal undulations of up to 15 m over mountain ranges in a spherical harmonic expansion to order and degree 22. Oceanic topography compensated at 40 km, reasonable for the thermally supported long wavelengths, matches the +10 m difference between old continents and old oceans in a detailed NASA/GSFC geoid. Removing the assumed compensation for the oceanic trenches leaves negative anomalies of up to 9 m amplitude caused by their uncompensated mass deficit. This mass deficit acts as a partial "regional compensation" for the excess mass of the subducting slabs, and partly explains why geoidal (and gravity) anomalies over the cold slabs are less than thermal models predict.

Ocean surface topography

Isostasy

10.1029/gl009i001p00029

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Citations (30)

Integrity—not just a federal issue

Science (2015)

Marcia McNutt

Few matters threaten the integrity of science more than scientists not being allowed to warn the public about legitimate hazards uncovered in the course of scientific research. Yet, this month, the issue was raised twice in the United States.

Scientific Integrity

Research Integrity

10.1126/science.aab1106

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Citations (2)

The mantle's lava lamp

Nature (1999)

Marcia McNutt

Hotspot (geology)

Core–mantle boundary

10.1038/45416

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Citations (4)

Societies can combat harassment

Science (2016)

Marcia McNutt

Imagine a student presenting a poster at a scientific meeting, thrilled when a senior scientist stops by to view the work. Chances are good, given the continuing underrepresentation of women at senior levels of academia, that the senior scientist is male. If the student is also male, he likely has no doubt that the senior scientist wants to learn more about the research. If the student is female, she may wonder: Does he want to get acquainted with my work, or me? This is the scenario that Meg Urry of Yale University, current president of the American Astronomical Society, posed during a session on “Forward Focused Ethics—What is the Role of Scientific Societies in Responding to Harassment and Other Workplace Climate Issues?” at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December 2015.

Harassment

Wonder

Scientific society

10.1126/science.aaf4216

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Citations (1)

Project NEPTUNE: an interactive, regional cabled ocean observatory in the Northeast Pacific

Oceans 2003. Celebrating the Past ... Teaming Toward the Future (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37492) (2003)

Jennifer Delaney P. Beauchamp Marcia McNutt Chris Barnes Alan D. Chave

Next-generation studies of dynamic, interacting processes in the Earth-ocean-climate system require new interactive, in situ approaches to complement and fundamentally extend the more traditional ship-based expeditionary science that has dominated oceanographic research for more than 100 years. Key to these studies are regional cabled ocean observatories. A US/Canadian consortium is building NEPTUNE, a regional observatory in the northeast Pacific that will be spatially associated with the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate.

Neptune

10.1109/oceans.2003.178480

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Citations (11)

Yellowstone: A continental midplate (hot spot) swell

Geophysical Research Letters (1994)

Paula Waschbusch Marcia McNutt

The Yellowstone hot spot has been identified mainly by its track of age‐progressive volcanics; many smaller scale tectonic features serve to hide the long‐wavelength hot spot‐related swell. By employing averaging and filtering techniques, we are able to identify a swell in both the gravity and topography and use them to constrain the apparent depth of compensation of the Yellowstone hot spot at 70±10 km. This value is comparable to the deepest compensation depths for swells on old oceanic lithosphere. A compensation depth within the mid‐ to lower lithosphere combined with the only 15 m.y. known duration of the hot spot suggests either dynamic thinning of the thermal plate or compensation by upwelling in a low‐viscosity asthenosphere, with some combination of the two explanations being consistent with seismic tomography results. Thus in many ways the Yellowstone hot spot appears quite similar to the oceanic analogues.

Asthenosphere

Swell

Carbonate compensation depth

geodynamics

10.1029/94gl00429

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Citations (6)

The Pope tackles sustainability

Science (2014)

Marcia McNutt

The war on environmental degradation has a powerful new ally: Pope Francis. Prompted by a Joint Workshop of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on sustainability that was convened in May 2014, the Vatican has articulated some of its strongest environmental statements to date, calling for all of us to take personal responsibility and redirect our relationship with nature to ensure the future habitability and sustainability of this planet (see the Perspective on p. 1457). The problems that motivate the Vatican are no different from those that concern the scientific community: depletion of nonrenewable resources, loss of ecosystem services, and risks from changing climate. But what the Vatican contributes is the rationale for taking action: because it is our moral responsibility to bequeath a habitable planet to future generations.

Habitability

10.1126/science.1259742

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Citations (9)