HR: 09:30h
AN: U31D-07    [Abstracts]
TI: The Ocean Observatories Initiative: Getting Wet Behind the Ears
AU: * Given, H K
EM: hgiven@joiscience.org
AF: Consortium for Ocean Leadership, 1201 New York Ave, NW Suite 400, Washington, DC 20005, United States
AU: Banahan, S
EM: sbanahan@joiscience.org
AF: Consortium for Ocean Leadership, 1201 New York Ave, NW Suite 400, Washington, DC 20005, United States
AB: The U.S. National Science Foundation's Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) is constructing an integrated network to provide the oceanographic research and education communities with continuous, interactive access to the oceans. The program will build permanent science–focused infrastructure that will enable geoscientists to simultaneously study multiple phenomena in the oceans over time scales from milliseconds to decades, and over spatial scales from sub-meter to global. An integrative computer architecture or cyberinfrastructure will allow researchers to communicate with and configure globally situated experiments in near-real time, forming virtual observatories by designing customized data streams readily incorporated into adaptive models. The project, approved for planning activities by the National Science Board in 2000, will undergo its Preliminary Design Review for readiness in December 2007 and is expected to receive the first installment of a total anticipated capital investment of $330M in 2008. Specific assets include autonomous platforms at high-latitude sites in the northern and southern hemispheres, a submarine ackbone cable spanning the seafloor of the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate, and moorings and mobile assets studying the coastal ocean continental shelf and slope in the Middle Atlantic Bight and offshore the Pacific Northwest. With its global dimension and unifying cyberinfrastructure, the OOI is expected to catalyze new understanding of the oceans in a way that ship-based measurements and experiments, with their shorter observation window and inherent limitations on power and bandwidth, are unable to accomplish.
DE: 3017 Hydrothermal systems (0450, 1034, 3616, 4832, 8135, 8424)
DE: 3080 Submergence instruments: ROV, AUV, submersibles
DE: 4203 Analytical modeling and laboratory experiments
DE: 4262 Ocean observing systems
DE: 4294 Instruments and techniques
SC: Union [U]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting