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Interdisciplinary Collaboration

June 17, 2017

Dave Ralston (right) and Porter Hoagland talk with WHOI Trustees about New York’s Hudson River. The expansion of the Panama Canal has led to the dredging of New York Harbor and others along the U.S. East Coast to accommodate larger cargo ships. Ralston, an estuarine physical oceanographer, found that deepening the harbor has driven salt water from the ocean farther up the Hudson. To keep drinking water in Poughkeepsie fresh, water has to be released from an upstream dam, making less water available for power generation and recreation. In a complementary study, Hoagland, a marine policy analyst, assessed the economic implications of those releases. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)