EAGER Collaborative Research: Testing a new sensor for short term and long term measurement of heat flow in lakes

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This project will develop a new probe to measure the amount of heat coming out of the ground beneath lakes. The probe will overcome current limitations by (1) enabling visual site selection so that researchers know where and how the probe is placed in the lake floor environment and pin-point important lake floor features such as gas seeps and chemosynthetic communities, (2) providing real-time data to assess data quality and site evaluation, and (3) monitoring temperature changes over time that might arise from changes in lake temperature. The probe will be deployed and tested in Mono Lake, California. Mono Lake has hosted the youngest volcanic eruptions in the region. There are, however, currently no heat flow measurements within the lake to constrain recent volcanic activity and volcanic hazards. The measurements may reveal the extent of magma bodies that connect the subsurface to the volcanic eruptions seen at Earth’s surface. This project will be integrated into a summer field camp so that 20 students can participate in the measurement campaign and data interpretation. This project provides an opportunity to test new instrumentation that would be useful in a broad range of settings. The prototype geophysical probe, called the LTMP (Lake Thermal Monitoring Probe) consists of a compact (1-3 m long), lightweight (20 kg), camera-mounted Lister-type heat flow probe designed for deployment by only two people on a small (~5 m) vessel in a lake bottom. The probe will be designed to provide both real-time lake floor video for site selection, and real-time subsurface temperature monitoring for up to one year, with data continuously beamed back to researchers. If the new probe works, it will provide a new high-resolution tool for measuring heat flow and fluid flow changes in complex geologic settings like caldera lakes, revealing how heat flow below lakes is coupled to other geosystems and hazards (e.g., the atmosphere, groundwater, volcanoes, earthquakes).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.