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NSF
00-102 (Replaces NSF
00-12)
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Program NewsOceanographic Technology and Interdisciplinary Coordination (OTIC)Technology Development:The overall objective of the OTIC Technology Development Program is to support efforts to develop new tools and capabilities for conducting ocean science research. And as discussed elsewhere in this newsletter, attention is becoming increasingly focused on sustained, time-series observations to address appropriate time and space scales of ocean processes. High priorities for the Program are two areas requiring new and improved capabilities: systems for making sustained observations for ocean research, and long-term chemical and biological sensors.
In January 2000, the Ocean Studies Board (OSB) conducted a workshop to examine the scientific merit of, technical requirements for, and overall feasibility of establishing the infrastructure needed to implement a system of seafloor observatories. The workshop was attended by about 75 ocean scientists from all disciplines and their input contributed to an OSB study to assess the extent to which observatories will address future requirements for conducting multidisciplinary ocean research, and to gauge the level of support for such programs within ocean sciences and the broader scientific community. Considerable enthusiasm was generated at the workshop, and we are looking forward to the publication of the workshop report later this summer.
The matter of improved biological and chemical sensors for long-term, sustained deployments is still an issue. The OTIC Program supports the development of innovative new sensors that address ocean science research requirements. The Program would also be receptive to funding a community workshop along the lines of the MARCHEM Workshop in 1993. A feature of that Workshop was participation by several commercial instrument manufacturers and several analytical chemists. Their cross-fertilization with the ocean science people resulted in some fresh thinking about sensor design and several successful prototypes resulted. Coastal Ocean Processes (CoOP) Program:
During January 2000, the CoOP office moved to Skidaway Institute of Oceanography and is now headed by Richard Jahnke. The OTIC Program would like to thank Mike Roman at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science for his extraordinary efforts and skilled leadership of CoOP for nearly seven years. The new CoOP web page can be found at http://starbuck.skio.peachnet.edu/coop/.
A new CoOP research initiative was recently started for Wind-Driven Transport Processes in the NE Pacific. Two major efforts are now underway, one of which is headed by Jack Barth at Oregon State University entitled "Coastal Ocean Advances in Shelf Transport (COAST). The second project is headed by John Largier at Scripps Institution of Oceanography with collaborators at San Francisco State University and University of California - Davis and Santa Cruz. This project is entitled "The Role of Wind-driven Transport in Shelf Productivity."
The two major projects in CoOP's Great Lakes initiative, KITES and EEGLE are in their third year and final field season. They have two years to go for data processing and analysis. Links to these projects' web sites are on the CoOP web page.
And CoOP has recently published a new report entitled "Transport and Transformation Processes over Continental Shelves with Substantial Freshwater Inflows." This is the Report from the CoOP Buoyancy-Driven Transport Processes Workshop held in October 1998. The CoOP Science Steering Committee has recommended that buoyancy-driven transport be a topic for the next major process study. A Program Announcement is anticipated in FY 2002. Copies of the Report are available through the CoOP Office. Larry Clark (hclark@nsf.gov)
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