FSML: Gulf of Alaska Dive and Marine Research Support Infrastructure Project

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Sitka Sound Science Center (SSSC) is a nonprofit center for marine research, education and outreach located on Sitka Sound in the Gulf of Alaska. This project will make improvements to the physical plant of its field station to make dive and marine research more efficient, safer and to provision several NSF-supported research projects in the biological and geosciences. The project will also improve SSSC's ability to protect and store scientific equipment for research in the geosciences. The studies conducted in the Gulf of Alaska and in the Tongass National Forest are important for improving our nation's understanding of how natural systems contribute to our economic and food security. Ocean acidification (OA) occurs more rapidly at higher latitudes sooner than lower latitude and in places with large amounts of fresh water inputs. Sitka Sound is a confluence of these factors, causing some of the highest rates of OA recorded in Alaska. The impacts of OA on the Gulf of Alaska ecosystem and its dependent human communities raises the importance of marine research in Sitka at this moment in time. Subtidal and intertidal research from the Sitka Sound Science Center is already increasing, but is limited by existing space, aging equipment, safety concerns and a paucity of dedicated dive research infrastructure.This project will create a better platform and staging area for new, NSF-funded dive and marine research in the Gulf of Alaska. The project will create a separate area for dive research equipment storage, and dive researchers' specific needs in the Mill Building of the Sitka Sound Science Center. It will upgrade the plumbing and the electrical in the entire building, provide showers, a place for the compressor, a drying room and bathrooms that will benefit dive research and other scientists that utilize the Sitka Sound Science Center field station facilities. Creating more dive research capacity is a critical component to furthering our ecosystem understandings in this rapidly changing environment. While SSSC's current facilities may be adequate for the increasing need for intertidal research, it does not have the ability to increase research in the subtidal. This is a gap in infrastructure, at the northern edge of the temperate Macrocystis forest, a highly dynamic area driven by both physical and biological factors. The current SSSC facility lacks reliable heat, plumbing and electricity. The upgrade will include improvements to SSSC's Mill Building interior and partitioning off inside the building for dive research equipment, creating a heated space for drying and changing, plumbing for toilets and showers with utilities to the facility and updating the electrical and the storage space for scientific equipment. It will also provide funding for a high capacity dive compressor, greatly increasing the ability to service multiple concurrent dive projects. For more about the SSSC, visit their website at https://sitkascience.org/.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.