A low-cost float for distributed, Lagrangian observations of the biological carbon pump

该项目将开发海洋观测浮标，利用新技术跟踪和成像单个颗粒向深海的运输，并有助于我们了解生物碳泵。跟踪海洋中碳的变化对于了解世界气候至关重要。如果成功的话，这些漂浮物将收集数据，这些数据可以为我们对生物碳泵（BCP）和全球碳循环的理解提供新的见解。该项目还将支持研究生的参与，有机碳从海洋表面向深海深处的迁移在调节大气碳，从而调节气候方面发挥着核心作用。因此，了解“生物碳泵”对于预测世界气候的演变至关重要。然而，由于这一过程的复杂性和现有观测的局限性（主要来自对颗粒拦截阱内容物的大量地球化学分析），对海洋碳固存的预测仍然极不确定。我们现在需要的是自主工具，这些工具既是拉格朗日工具，对于准确量化呼吸，下沉率和通量至关重要，也是可广泛部署的（低成本），对于减少空间和时间混淆以及确保统计意义至关重要。拟议的浮动技术将把环境标签技术和低成本成像的最新技术发展融合到一个模块化的低成本平台中，这将导致下一代观测平台，并对我们对重要碳途径的理解产生重大影响。其目标是使拉格朗日平台的密集分布成为可能，这些平台可以直接观察驱动BCP的单个粒子的传输和转化。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project will develop ocean observing floats using new technologies for tracking and imaging the transport of individual particles to the deep ocean and contribute to our understanding of the biological carbon pump (BCP). Tracking what happens to carbon in our oceans is critical for understanding the world's climate. If successful, the floats will collect data that could provide new insights with respect to our understanding of the Biological Carbon Pump (BCP) and global carbon cycling. The project will also support graduate student participation.The transport of organic carbon from the ocean's surface to its abyssal depths plays a central role in regulating atmospheric carbon, and thus the climate. Understanding the "Biological Carbon Pump", is thus crucial to predicting the evolution of the world's climate. However, due to the complexity of this process and the limitations of available observations (largely from bulk geochemical analyses of the contents of particle-intercepting traps), predictions of oceanic carbon sequestration remain extremely uncertain. What we need now are autonomous tools which are both Lagrangian, essential for accurately quantifying respiration, sinking rates, and fluxes, and widely deployable (low cost), essential for reducing spatial and temporal aliasing, and for ensuring statistical significance. The proposed float technology will merge recent technological developments in environmental tag technology and low-cost imaging into a modular, low-cost platform that will result in the next generation of observing platforms and have a large impact on the state of our understanding of important carbon pathways. The goal is to make possible dense distributions of Lagrangian platforms that can directly observe the transport and transformation of individual particles that drive the BCP.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.