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The third and fourth commission members are Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science, and former Alaska Lt. Gov. Fran Ulmer, currently University of Alaska Anchorage chancellor, the AP has learned. The appointments were expected to be announced publicly soon.

Boesch is a native of New Orleans and a biological oceanographer who has been a leader in studying how man affects coastal areas. He helped write two books on oil spills and the environment and was the first executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and a prominent researcher in the Gulf of Mexico dead zone.

Boesch was a co-author of last year’s massive federal study on how global warming will affect Americans’ daily lives. He has chaired four large studies by the National Academies of Sciences, all on coastal environmental and science issues. And he has written more than 70 research studies published in scientific journals.

In a May 9 column for the Washington Post’s website, Boesch wrote that the spill might be part of what he called “the winds of change” on oil and energy. He acknowledged, however, that the amounts of oil spilled from offshore development have been less than spilled in tanker accidents.

Ulmer, who was lieutenant governor from 1994 to 2002 and a Democratic leader in the Alaska House before that, was defeated in 2002 by then Sen. Frank Murkowski.

She later taught at the University of Alaska Anchorage and was named its chancellor, the No. 2 position there. She announced her retirement earlier this year.

Ulmer, a lawyer and former mayor of Juneau, has also been a member of the Commission on Arctic Climate Change run by the Aspen Institute, a Colorado think tank.

Special thanks to Richard Charter