| NSF Org: |
DBI Division of Biological Infrastructure |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 9, 2016 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | August 17, 2017 |
| Award Number: | 1624380 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Peter McCartney
DBI Division of Biological Infrastructure BIO Directorate for Biological Sciences |
| Start Date: | August 1, 2016 |
| End Date: | July 31, 2018 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $332,562.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $332,562.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
17 BIOLOGICAL STATION ST. GEORGE'S BM-07 BD GE01 (441)297-1880 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
BD |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | FIELD STATIONS |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): | |
| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.074 |
ABSTRACT
The ocean ecosystem is a shared resource that provides food and oxygen while playing an important role in global cycles of carbon and nutrients. The oceans are, however, threatened by a number of human induced changes including increases in temperature, nutrients, CO2 and chemicals. In order to understand how the changing ocean environment influences the biology of marine organisms, scientists must run controlled experiments exploring the effects of many types of stressors, carefully quantifying their individual and combined effects. The Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS; www.bios.edu ) - an independent U.S. not-for-profit organization and a Bermuda Registered Charity - is uniquely located on a seagrass and coral platform with easy access to the open ocean of the North Atlantic, providing the opportunity to perform manipulative experiments on a diverse array of organisms. A new Environmental Change Research Facility (ECRF) will be established at BIOS, initiating the capability for studies involving multiple environmental stressors associated with the effects of global climate change. This will consist of two environmental rooms, integrated into the pre-existing flow-through seawater, and CO2 exposure facilities that will allow for experiments at multiple temperatures. Many of the organisms of interest are small in size (i.e. juvenile coral through to bacteria), and many of the processes require specialized stains to visualize. Thus, the facility will also include a new microscope that will allow analyses at a broad range of sizes (petri dish to single cell) and that is capable of quantifying changes in organism development, calcification, and species composition. With the addition of both the environmental chambers and the microscope, the range of experiments that can be run at BIOS will be substantially expanded. BIOS hosts a large number of visiting scientists, and BIOS researchers participate in ongoing scientific collaborations with external scientists, many with NSF-supported research programs, such that the ECRF equipment will have a far reaching impact on the research capacity of the marine sciences community as a whole. The facility will also support the primary goal of the internships and courses at BIOS: to immerse students in experiential learning through research in the ocean sciences. This can be a seminal change for many students whose home institutions lack programs in marine science or the opportunity to conduct independent research. Education experiences at BIOS can influence decisions that determine STEM education and career trajectories, with students leaving our programs better prepared to pursue professional careers and/or graduate programs. The ECRF will provide opportunities to train undergraduate and graduate students in complex multi-stressor studies, fostering a next generation of scientists with the interdisciplinary skillset required to address the pressing questions of environmental change in the marine environment.
One of the major objectives in modern biological oceanography is to understand how the myriad of co-occurring anthropogenic stressors influence marine organisms and determine how these will modify global biogeochemical cycles. The objective of this grant is to establish an Environmental Change Research Facility (ECRF) designed to test and quantify the effects of multiple anthropogenic stressors on the marine environment (including temperature, nutrients, CO2, low O2, and toxicants). Due to its unique location in the oligotrophic North Atlantic gyre, BIOS provides access to a broad array of marine systems, including open ocean, near-shore coral reef, seagrass and mangrove ecosystems. The accessibility of these biomes via BIOS?s fleet of research vessels is complimented by the presence of a flowing seawater laboratory and CO2 exposure system where manipulative experiments can be conducted. This grant supports the installation of two environmental rooms that, by providing both thermal stability for process studies and opportunities for controlled multi-stressor experiments, will substantially expand the types of research that could be pursued at BIOS by resident scientists, visiting researchers and students. Many of the organisms of interest ? planktonic zooplankton, calcifying foraminifera or algae, bacteria and viruses, and early-life stages of benthic organisms such as sea urchins and coral ? are quite small. In order to quantify and visualize the response of this wide size-range of organisms, the facility will also include a new microscope, capable of visualizing changes in organism development and calcification, as well as cell enumeration. This instrument will increase the in-house observational capabilities for both preserved and live imaging and provide the capacity to precisely control image positioning to allow for time lapse capture of growth, biomineralization and dissolution. With the addition of this instrumentation, scientists and visiting researchers will be in a position to address the pressing questions of how environmental parameters affect the function of marine organisms, including biomineralization, development, ageing, biogeochemical cycling, community composition, microevolution and subsequently ecosystem function and human health impacts. They ensure the continued success and growth of an already transformative program in microbial oceanography by expanding the capacity to execute and analyze process studies in a controlled environment. Paralleling the benefits to basic research, the ECRF facility will be available for use with student internships and BIOS courses. Since 2011, BIOS has hosted over 800 students annually, most of them from US institutions. The ECRF will provide opportunities to train undergraduate and graduate students to conduct and analyze complex multi-stressor studies, fostering a next generation of scientists with the interdisciplinary skillset required to address the pressing questions of environmental change.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The Environmental Change Research Facility (ECRF) opened in early 2017 for use by scientists at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS), as well as visiting researchers and students. This facility enhances BIOS as a cutting-edge location for global environmental change research. This award funded the modernization of an existing environmental room and the installation of a second new room. The insulated 10-by-12 foot chambers have connections to flowing sea water and gas lines to provide controlled conditions for a variety of multi-stressor experiments. The facility allows researchers to collect organisms such as corals, sea snails, open ocean plankton and microorganisms and study them under both natural conditions and a range of possible future ocean conditions. The chambers have sensitive temperature controllers that allow scientists to stress organisms with temperature changes (warmer or cooler), as well as gas controllers that allow carbon dioxide to be bubbled through experimental tanks to replicate conditions of ocean acidification. Such experiments will allow scientists to more accurately predict how organisms will respond to future ocean conditions. In order to continuously monitor changes among the organisms in real-time, the award also funded a new inverted microscope with DIC (differential infrared contrast) and epifluorescent capabilities that are specifically designed for live cell imaging over a range of organism sizes. This instrument provides the ability to quantify the nuanced changes that are anticipated with environmental stress. The addition of both the environmental chambers and the inverted microscope substantially increases the research capacity at BIOS, enabling users to carry out novel incubation experiments and immediately analyze samples with the inverted microscope. It also provides visiting students with the opportunity to design and execute complex multi-stressor experiments that are crucial for a broader understanding of how a changing climate impacts marine organisms. These infrastructure improvements have benefitted a variety of internal and external research programs at BIOS, including programs in open ocean microbial ecology, biogeochemical cycling, biomineralization, biomechanics, paleoceanography, invertebrate physiology, and organismal response to multiple stressors. Accompanying these benefits to research, there has been a concomitant expansion in experiential learning opportunities for students in academic-term and summer courses, internships, and funded projects at BIOS.
Last Modified: 09/21/2018
Modified by: Amy E Maas
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