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

海洋自然地将生物体产生的碳从大气中转移到深水中，这在地球气候对二氧化碳增加的反应中起着重要作用。此外，一些人提议有意加速这一进程，以扭转人类的二氧化碳排放。然而，梳理驱动碳沉降的不同生物影响仍然是一个重大挑战。测量下沉碳所需的工具往往昂贵且专业化，限制了它们的可及性。在这个项目中，将开发、测试和改进一种装有摄像头的沉积物捕集器，用于捕获和识别下沉的颗粒。它将利用公开共享的软件和基于商业可用组件的硬件设计，使其他研究人员更容易采用。该项目还将为研究生和本科生暑期学生提供指导和培训的机会，并将支持一名早期职业研究人员。将有机碳输送到海洋内部的生物碳泵，几十年来一直受到科学界的关注，因为它维持了海洋垂直溶解的无机碳梯度，并通过二氧化碳与大气的交换与全球气候密切相关。人类对海洋的持续影响可能会推动未来生物碳泵效率的变化，这将对气候产生重要影响。有意增加海洋生物碳的输入，无论是通过营养施肥还是生物质注入，也被认为是增加海洋碳固存的备选方法。因此，开发广泛可用的工具来测量下沉的有机质通量是非常重要的。该项目的第一个目标是开发和测试沉积物捕集器控制器，该控制器将简化基于商用剖面浮标的中性浮力沉积物捕集器的构建和部署，从而扩大此类捕集器的潜在用户基础。第二个目标是与陷阱控制器集成一个低成本的，向上看的原位相机来拍摄下沉的颗粒。在各种平台流体动力条件下表征该相机的实验室和现场性能，并开发用于机载数据还原的软件，将为其用于量化自主平台上的下沉碳通量奠定基础。最后，认识到较低的中上层区域（这里定义为500-1000米）对于长时间尺度的生物碳固存观测至关重要，项目的第三个目标是优化这些工具，以便在这些典型的采样不足深度使用。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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。

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.