Collaborative Research: An open, platform-agnostic sediment trap controller and imaging sensor

协作研究：开放的、与平台无关的沉积物捕获控制器和成像传感器

• 批准号: 2220338
• 负责人: Margaret Estapa
• 金额: $ 65.45万
• 依托单位: University of Maine
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-09-01 至 2025-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2220338&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; open; platform; agnostic

The ocean naturally moves carbon produced by living organisms from the atmosphere to deep water, and this plays an important role in how Earth’s climate may respond to increasing amounts of carbon dioxide. Additionally, some have proposed attempting to intentionally accelerate this process in an effort to reverse human carbon dioxide emissions. However, teasing apart the different biological influences that drive sinking carbon remains a major challenge. The tools that are required to measure sinking carbon are often expensive and specialized, limiting their accessibility. In this project, a camera-equipped sediment trap that catches and identifies sinking particles will be developed, tested, and refined. It will utilize openly shared software, and hardware designs that are based upon commercially-available components, to enable easier adoption by other researchers. This project will also provide opportunities for mentoring and training to a graduate student and undergraduate summer students, and would support an early-career researcher.The biological carbon pump, which delivers organic carbon into the ocean’s interior, has received focused scientific attention for decades because it maintains the ocean’s vertical dissolved inorganic carbon gradient, and is closely linked to global climate via exchange of carbon dioxide with the atmosphere. Ongoing anthropogenic impacts on the ocean may drive future changes in the efficiency of the biological carbon pump, which would have important climate implications. Intentionally increasing the input of biological carbon into the ocean, either through nutrient fertilization or biomass injection, is also proposed as a candidate method to increase ocean carbon sequestration. The development of widely-available tools for measuring sinking organic matter fluxes is therefore of great importance. The first objective of this project is to develop and test a sediment trap controller that would simplify the construction and deployment of neutrally-buoyant sediment traps based upon commercially-available profiling floats, thus broadening the potential user base of such traps. The second objective is to integrate with the trap controller a low-cost, upward-looking in situ camera to image sinking particles. Characterizing this camera’s laboratory and field performance under a variety of platform hydrodynamic conditions, and developing software for onboard data reduction, will lay the groundwork for its use to quantify sinking carbon fluxes aboard autonomous platforms. Finally, recognizing that the lower mesopelagic zone (defined here as 500-1000 m) is critical to observations of biological carbon sequestration over long timescales, the third project objective is to optimize these tools for use at these typically under-sampled depths.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.

海洋自然会将活生物体从大气中产生的碳移动到深水，这在地球气候可能对增加二氧化碳量增加的方式中起着重要作用。此外，有些人提议试图故意加速这一过程，以逆转人类二氧化碳的排放。但是，嘲笑驱动沉没碳的不同生物学影响仍然是一个主要挑战。测量沉没碳所需的工具通常是昂贵且专业化的，从而限制了它们的可访问性。在这个项目中，将开发，测试和精制一个配备摄像头的沉积物陷阱，以捕获并识别下沉的颗粒。它将利用公开共享的软件和基于市售组件的硬件设计，以使其他研究人员更容易采用。该项目还将为研究生提供心理和培训的机会。学生和本科夏季学生，并将支持一名职业生涯的研究人员。生物学碳泵（将有机碳提供到海洋的内饰中）几十年来一直引起了科学的关注，因为它可以维持海洋垂直溶解的无机碳梯度，并且通过与碳二氧化碳与碳氧化碳氧化物的交流密切相关，并与全球气候紧密相连。持续的人为影响对海洋的影响可能会推动生物碳泵效率的未来变化，这将具有重要的气候影响。还提出，通过营养受精或生物量注射，有意将生物碳输入到海洋中，也被提议作为增加海洋碳疗程的候选方法。因此，开发用于测量有机物通量下沉的广泛工具至关重要。该项目的第一个目的是开发和测试一个沉积物陷阱控制器，该控制器可以简化基于市值可用的分析浮子的中性沉积物陷阱的构建和部署，从而扩大了此类陷阱的潜在用户群。第二个目标是与陷阱控制器集成一个低成本，向上的原位摄像头，以形象下沉的粒子。表征该相机在各种平台流体动力条件下的实验室和现场性能，以及开发用于减少机载数据的软件，将为其用于量化自主平台上的碳通量的基础。最后，认识到较低的中质区域（此处定义为500-1000 m）对于长时间尺度上的生物碳固换的观察至关重要，第三个项目的目标是优化这些工具，以在这些典型的不足采样的剥离中使用这些工具，这是NSF的法定任务，并反映了通过评估的依据，该奖项已被视为众所周知的构成群体，而构成了依据。