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The recent U.S. Census
reminded those living in the land-locked Rocky Mountain west that many
Americans are lucky to live within 50 miles of an ocean. Lest we feel
totally high and dry, remember that the ground we are standing on was
— once upon a time some millions of years ago — a shallow ocean.
Given our region’s ocean heritage, it is most fitting that Colorado College honor one of the world’s most distinguished oceanographers, Dr. Tom Malone ’65. He joins us today with his wife, Mary Lou Meadows Malone ’65. Malone’s work as a researcher and organizer of research efforts is at the forefront of some of the most important studies being conducted on the state of the global environment. An expert on marine ecosystem dynamics, phytoplankton ecology, and coastal eutrophication, he currently co-chairs two panels charged with formulating design and implementation plans for an integrated coastal ocean observing system in U.S. waters and globally. The U.S. effort is sponsored by the NOAA, Navy, NSF, and EPA. Development of the global system is sponsored by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, World Meteorological Society, United Nations Environmental Program, and International Council of Scientific Unions. The mandate to establish a Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) was articulated and ratified as an international consensus with the signing of the Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biodiversity, and the Program of Action for Sustainable Development (Agenda 21) at the 1992 United Nations (UN) Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro. The goal is to provide the data and information required for rapid detection and reliable predictions of the effects of global climate change and human activities on coastal ecosystems and the living resources they support. He also co-chairs the Coasts and Oceans Panel of the John Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. This panel is developing the first consistent framework for assessing the state of our nation’s ecosystems. The author of more than 60 publications in his field, Malone is based at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, where he has directed the Center’s Horn Point Environmental Laboratory for the past 11 years. In 1998, his peers elected him president of the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography. (Limnology, incidentally, for those of you who might become contestants on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” is the study of fresh water ecosystems.) At Colorado College, Malone studied zoology with some of the best professors to ever grace our campus — Doc Stabler, Mary Alice Hamilton, and Richard Beidleman. “Doc and Mary Alice taught me how to design and conduct scientifically rigorous experiments and how to write,” he recalls. “They also taught me discipline. Dr. Beidleman turned me on to ecology and field research. He was my inspiration to continue my education in oceanography.” Malone credits the trio for instilling in him “the confidence needed to head off to Hawaii to attend graduate school with a wife, a six-month-old daughter, and $50 between us.”
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