Democratizing access to ocean observing technology with emerging low-cost embedded systems

在过去的十年里，技术进步迅猛发展，新兴电子元件的成本也有所下降。许多这些进步尚未应用于海洋，这为在前所未有的地球化学和生物学相关的空间和时间尺度上将最优先的海洋科学研究问题与使能技术相匹配提供了及时的机会（从而增强了观测者、建模者的能力，并直接吸引了公众对海洋学过程的兴趣）。在这里，我们将新兴技术应用于沿海生物地球化学过程，目标是开发一个经济实惠的沿海观测平台和经济实惠的新传感器，从而使研究人员和当地公民团体感到兴奋。我们已经优先考虑了基于假设驱动科学的基础海洋学研究问题，这些问题将受益于传感器、仪器和技术转移的进步和发展，这些进步和发展可以解决采样不足的海洋环境问题。这项研究将建立在一项新的，但经过验证的技术之上，该技术使用开源硬件组件和定制软件脚本，可以由高中和本科生，环境管理组织或精通技术的公民科学家组装，测试，部署和维护，从而促进对STEM领域的兴趣。这项工作将改进、扩大和加速低成本无线海岸观测平台的开发和部署，特别是扩大目标参数，以监测和评估最适用于公共利益的过程：沿海淹没、潮汐变化、有害洪水、温度、盐度、溶解氧、叶绿素、浊度和气象数据。部署将集中在最强大的、负担得起的研究级仪器和低成本传感器上，以扩大网络并吸引更大的社区基础。

Technological advancements have exploded in the last decade and the costs of emerging electronic components have decreased. Many of these advancements have not yet been applied to the oceans, providing a timely opportunity to match highest priority marine science research questions with enabling techniques over unprecedented geochemically and biologically relevant spatial and temporal scales (thus empowering observationalists, modelers, and directly engaging public interest in oceanographic processes). Here, we apply emergent technologies to coastal biogeochemical processes on scales capable of exciting researchers and local citizens groups by targeting development of an affordable coastal observatory platform and affordable new sensors.We have prioritized fundamental oceanographic research questions rooted in hypothesis-driven science that is poised to benefit from sensor, instrumentation, and technology transfer advancements and developments that can address the problems of an undersampled marine environment. This research will build upon a new, but proven, technology that uses open-source hardware components and custom software scripts that can be assembled, tested, deployed, and maintained by high school and undergraduate students, environmental management organizations, or the technologically-savvy citizen scientist, catalyzing interest in STEM fields. The work will improve, expand, and accelerate development and deployment of a low-cost wireless coastal observation platform, specifically scaling up to target parameters important for monitoring and assessing processes most applicable to public interest: coastal inundation, tidal variability, nuisance flooding, temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll, turbidity, and meteorological data. Deployments will focus upon the most robust affordable research-grade instruments and low-cost sensors to expand the network and engage a larger community base.