The Ocean Observatories

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The Ocean Observatories Initiative Opportunitie
s for increasing ocean literacy
OOI will provide scientists an enduring in situ
infrastructure to study episodic events in
extreme ocean environments.
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What is the Ocean Observatories Initiative?

• A science-driven, distributed ocean research
  platform to provide data from atmospheric, water
  column, and seafloor instruments.
• Science drivers climate variability and ocean
  ecosystems, air-sea interactions,
  biogeochemistry, coastal processes, mixing
  dynamics, plate-scale geodynamics, fluid-rock
  interactions, and the sub-seafloor biosphere.
• National Science Foundations (NSF) contribution
  to national/international ocean observing
  efforts.
• 5-year, 331M construction 50M operation.
• Operational lifetime of 25 years.
• Provide core capabilities and expansion
  capabilities to support investigator experiments
  and instrumentation.

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• 3 Global-scale nodes.
• 5 Regional-scale nodes in NE Pacific, cabled
  plate-scale observatory.
• Coastal-scale nodes in Mid-Atlantic Bight and NE
  Pacific.
• Mobile assets.
• Cyberinfrastructure for data access, adaptive
  sampling, collaborative experimentation.
• Integrated Education and Public Engagement.
  

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Unifying Cyberinfrastructure for services,
access, analysis, interactive observatory
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The OOI Project Team

• NSF Geosciences and Large Facilities Office
• Consortium for Ocean Leadership Management and
  System Integration
• University of California - San Diego
  Cyberinfrastructure Implementing Organization
  (IO)
• Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Oregon
  State University, and Scripps Institution of
  Oceanography Coastal and Global-Scale IO
• University of Washington Regional-Scale IO
• Education and Public Engagement IO - TBD

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Progress and Status

• Successful Conceptual Design Review (August
  2006)
• Successful Preliminary Design Review (December
  2007)
• Final Design Review in October 2008
• National Science Board review May 2009
• Construction phase to start summer 2010

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What is the role of the oceans in global carbon
cycle?
At this time estimates of dynamic fluxes have not
be made, although it is known that ocean systems
are highly variable and are undergoing change.
Locations of existing databases used to estimate
global coastal annual air-sea CO2 flux (Cai et
al. (2006) Borges (2005).
The OOI will provide long time- series of
measurements using new generation sensors to
quantify the range of secular changes in coastal
ocean processes in extreme ocean environments.
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Global Moorings

• Surface mooring provides platform for meteorology
  and air-sea flux sampling, power generation, and
  satellite communications.
• Subsurface mooring with surface-piercing upper
  profiler, inductively linked lower profiler,
  acoustic modem.
• Flanking moorings with fixed sensors
  (not shown)
• Gliders for surveys and feature tracking.

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• Cabled seafloor instruments site specific
  sensors.
• Cabled moorings at N1, N3
• Plate-scale continental margin scale

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We are now able to measure things as never before
as ocean sensor technology is in a
revolution OOI will provide a sustained high
bandwidth and high power presence in several
extreme and critical ocean biomes. The network
will allow for the new generation of instruments
are coming online
Single cell imaging
Acoustics, video, bioluminscence
Macro Micro nutrients
Holography
Air-sea exchange
Gene profiles, mRNA
physics
Hanson, Widder, Quigg, Delong, Johnson,
Firedrichs, Chavez, Malkei
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High priority as ocean carbon sequestration is
episodic and shows seasonal and inter-annual
variability
Inter-annual variability at the in open ocean
Seasonal variability in the coastal ocean
Thanks to Boehme and DeGrandpre
Public release on 12/3/2007 Climos Inc.,
Ecosecurities, and Det Norske Veritas outline
procedures for large scale fertilization of the
oceans.
Thanks to Karl, Bidigare, and Lukas
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Total CO2 flux
Need to observe not only the fluxes and inventory
changes, but the physical and biological
processes that determine and modulate them
Anthropogenic CO2 inventory
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EXTREME EVENTS IN THE ATMOSPHERE What is the role
of vertical mixing in the ocean interior for
determining the global distribution of heat and
nutrients in the ocean?
Heat
(Emanuel Edson )
Wind Speed
The OOI will provide the capability to collect
data during extreme weather events on decadal
time scales.
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EXTREME EVENTS IN THE SEAFLOOR EARTHQUAKES
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What are the forces acting on plates and plate
boundaries that result in local and regional
plate deformation?

• Change in earthquake distribution after Cape
  Mendocino earthquakes, July 1992. OOI will
  provide critical seafloor seismic information.

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How are many of the major ecosystems in the ocean
crust modulated by Earthquakes?
NOW
OOI will provide the scientists the first
sustained presence in the deep sea
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How do tectonic, oceanographic processes modulate
the flux of carbon into and out of the submarine
gas hydrate reservoirs?
OOI will provide the scientists the first
sustained presence in hydrate fields
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OOI will provide the scientists a sustained
real-time presence in the deep sea
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Wind Forcing and Large-Scale Circulation
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Coastal Upwelling Fuels Primary Production
Sea-surface temperature
chlorophyll
temperature
Courtesy of T. Strub (OSU)
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What physical processes that drive large scale
shifts in the chemistry and biology in the oceans?
The low dissolved oxygen resulted in mass
mortalities of fish and shell fish. The causes
and frequency of these extreme events are unknown.
The OOI will provide sustained spatial
time-series observations from the local to the
mesoscale to understand interannual variability
of hypoxia on the east and west coasts.
Thanks to Grantham and Barth
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A distributed network of fixed and mobile assets
to spatial time series of a marine ecosystem
PNW Assets with Endurance Array

• Shelfbreak
• plankton gradients
• mud bottom
• cross-shelf flux
• sourcewater

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Climate forcing of zooplankton (processes not
understood due to lack of sustained observations)
Concentration of calanus finmarchicus, the
dominant zooplankton species of N.Atlantic
Correlation of calanus and NAO
NAO with center of action south of Greenland
NAO North Atlantic Oscillation
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In Contrast Climate, weather, and human
structuring of coastal foodwebs.
Hurricane and Tropical Storm Tracks
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Pioneer Array - Mid-Atlantic Bight

• Temporal context from combination of surface
  moorings and subsurface profiling moorings.
• Autonomous, adaptive, sampling by AUVs with
  docking stations
• Gliders sampling far-field variability
• Multi-function nodes to accommodate benthic
  sensors.
• Near-real time communications
• Reconfigurable, relocatable

100 m
500 m
40 km
15 km
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What physical processes that structure the
ecosystems in the coastal oceans?

• Shelf-break and coastal zone are the most
  important marine habitats in the Mid-Atlantic
  Bight
• Shelf-break has highest diversity of marine
  mammals in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic EEZ

Natural Resources Defense Council, 2001