Autonomous, Low Cost Platform for Seafloor Geodesy

PIs要求资助开发一种经济有效的方法，以准确测量海底的短期垂直运动，在不需要昂贵的船舶时间的情况下保持海底压力的连续长期记录。这种能力将通过为夏威夷大学的波浪滑翔机配备集成声学遥测包、双频大地测量级全球定位系统（GPS）接收器、气象传感器、机载嵌入式处理单元和蜂窝遥测技术来开发。他们将演示使用波浪滑翔机查询海底的高精度压力传感器，以检索压力和温度数据，并将海底数据与高速率GPS观测数据和气象数据一起传输到岸上。然后，他们将把海底测量数据与地面气压数据结合起来，并通过波浪滑翔机的运动定位对海面进行精确的垂直测量。利用GPS来确定厘米级精度的海底垂直运动。更广泛的影响：对海底运动进行实时测量的能力有可能大大提高对海洋地质灾害的预测。此外，如果这些滑翔机系统最终可以用于GPS-A系统（即测量水平和垂直运动），它将彻底改变我们对海底变形的理解。这个拟议的项目有可能创造一个平台，能够调查与俯冲带和不稳定火山侧翼的近海地区的海啸危险有关的科学问题。这些问题对社会来说非常重要，因为目前有数百万人容易受到海啸的影响。增加一种低成本、非船舶的海底大地测量数据收集资源将对科学界极为有益。它还将为研究生提供资金。

The PIs request funding to develop a cost effective approach for accurately measuring short-term vertical motions of the seafloor, maintaining a continuous long-term record of seafloor pressure without the requirement for costly ship time. This capability will be developed by equipping a University of Hawaii Wave Glider with an integrated acoustic telemetry package, a dual frequency geodetic-grade Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver, meteorological sensors, an onboard embedded processing unit, and cellular telemetry. They will demonstrate the use of the Wave Glider to interrogate high accuracy pressure sensors on the sea floor to retrieve pressure and temperature data, and transmit the seafloor data along with high rate GPS observables and meteorological data to shore. They will then integrate the seafloor measurements with surface air pressure data, and precise vertical measurements of the sea surface from kinematic positioning of the Wave Glider?s GPS to determine cm-scale accuracy vertical seafloor motions.Broader Impacts: The ability to make real-time measurements of seafloor motions has the potential to dramatically enhance prediction of marine geo-hazards. Further, if these glider systems can eventually be adapted for GPS-A systems (i.e., measurement of horizontal as well as vertical motions) it will revolutionize our understanding of seafloor deformation. This proposed project has the potential to create a platform that would be capable of investigating scientific questions related to tsunamigenic hazards in offshore regions of subduction zones and unstable volcano flanks. These questions are of great importance to society as many millions of people are currently vulnerable to tsunami impacts. The addition of a low-cost, non-ship based resource for collection seafloor geodetic data would be extremely beneficial to the scientific community. It will also provide funding for a graduate student.