Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution/ Ocean Class AGORS Oceanographic Instrumentation

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This proposal requests $447,279 to build a portable Jumbo Piston Coring System for the Ocean Class vessels of the UNOLS Fleet.Sediment coring supports high impact science in a diverse array of disciplines in the geosciences.Access to reliable coring systems is essential for addressing a number of critical questions of both scientific and societal importance, including almost all of the scientific priorities outlined in the Decadal Survey of Ocean Sciences. Despite the continued importance of sediment coring technologies, there is widespread community concern that there has been an erosion of sediment coring capability available to the U.S. research community. Based on the responses to a community survey and discussions during a workshop convened at the National Science Foundation in May 2015, the scientific community expressed a high priority for the development of a robust and portable Jumbo Piston Coring system that is capable of deployment on all Global and Ocean Class vessels and capable of collecting cores of up to 20 m length over the full range of ocean depths (?Science Driven Assessment of Needs for marine Sediment Coring 2015- 2025,? Report of Workshop at NSF, 28-29 May 2015).Broader ImpactsThe principal impact of the present proposal is under Merit Review Criterion 2 of the Proposal Guidelines (NSF 13-589). It provides infrastructure support for scientists to use the vessel and its shared-use instrumentation in support of their NSF-funded oceanographic research projects (which individually undergo separate review by the relevant research program of NSF). The acquisition, maintenance and operation of shared-use instrumentation allows NSF-funded researchers from any US university or lab access to working, calibrated instruments for their research, reducing the cost of that research, and expanding the base of potential researchers