Jeffrey Runge, Ph.D.

Contact Information

Phone: 207.228.1652

CV: Link to Runge CV

Email: jeffrey.runge@maine.edu

Address:
Gulf of Maine Research Institute
350 Commercial Street
Portland, ME  04101

Education

Ph.D. University of Washington

Description

Jeffrey Runge holds a Ph.D. in Oceanography, with a research specialty in zooplankton ecology, from the University of Washington. He was a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Oceanography at Dalhousie University, then a research scientist at the Université Laval in Quebec, where he studied coupling between ice algal blooms and pelagic ecosystem productivity in Hudson Bay. For fifteen years he worked for the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans at the Institut Maurice Lamontagne in Mont-Joli, Quebec, where he headed a section studying secondary production and fisheries recruitment processes in coastal waters of eastern Canada. He was research professor in the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space at the University of New Hampshire before becoming a faculty member in the University of Maine’s School of Marine Sciences at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.  He has been involved in research associated with both the Canadian and U.S. GLOBEC (Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics) programs.

Research interests

Primary Research Interests

  • Linkages between climate, ocean ecosystem productivity and recruitment into the fisheries.
  • Factors determining variability in production of zooplankton, including larvae of commercially harvested fish and invertebrates
  • Application of coupled, 3-dimensional physical-biological models to investigate connections among variation in ocean currents and temperature, zooplankton production, and the growth and survival of fish larvae.

Current Research and Scientific Activities

  • Dispersal of Atlantic cod eggs and larvae from spawning areas in the Gulf of Maine,
  • Ocean acidification effects on zooplankton
  • Factors sustaining the high abundance of the planktonic copepod, Calanus finmarchicus, in the Gulf of Maine
  • Seasonal and interannual variation in abundance and species composition of zooplankton and ichthyoplankton at fixed stations in the coastal Gulf of Maine
  • Interaction between Calanus finmarchicus, herring and higher trophic levels in the coastal Gulf of Maine ecosystem