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，这在地球气候如何应对日益增多的二氧化碳方面发挥了重要作用。此外，一些人提议有意加快这一进程，以努力扭转人类二氧化碳排放。然而，梳理出驱动碳下沉的不同生物影响仍然是一个重大挑战。测量碳沉降量所需的工具往往昂贵且专业，限制了它们的可及性。在这个项目中，将开发、测试和改进一种配备摄像头的沉积物捕集器，该捕集器可以捕捉和识别下沉颗粒。它将利用开放共享的软件和硬件设计，这些设计基于商业上可用的组件，以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机会，并将支持职业生涯早期的研究人员。生物碳泵将有机碳输送到海洋内部，几十年来一直受到关注，因为它保持了海洋垂直溶解的无机碳梯度，并通过与大气的二氧化碳交换与全球气候密切相关。对海洋持续的人为影响可能会推动生物碳泵效率的未来变化，这将对气候产生重要影响。有意识地增加生物碳向海洋的输入，无论是通过营养肥料还是生物量注入，也被认为是增加海洋碳固存的一个候选方法。因此，开发广泛可用的测量下沉有机物通量的工具是非常重要的。该项目的第一个目标是开发和测试一种沉积物捕集器控制器，以商业上可获得的剖面浮标为基础，简化中性浮力沉积物捕集器的建造和部署，从而扩大这类捕集器的潜在用户基础。第二个目标是与捕捉器控制器集成一个低成本的、仰视的原位相机，以拍摄下沉颗粒的图像。表征该相机在各种平台水动力条件下的实验室和现场性能，并开发机载数据还原软件，将为其用于量化自主平台上的下沉碳通量奠定基础。最后，认识到较低的中层(这里定义为500-1000米)对于在长时间尺度上观察生物碳固定至关重要，第三个项目目标是优化这些工具，以便在这些典型的欠采样深度使用。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.