Year-round automated observations of ecological processes in coastal waters

最近，一项为期6年的研究和开发项目“大西洋地区跨学科海洋环境预测”在成功展示了一个综合的跨学科海岸观测和建模系统后终止，该系统通过创新的网络资源向用户和研究人员近实时报告数据和预测。这是加拿大的第一次，也是世界上第一次。该项目的遗产之一是一个仪器遥测浮标，该浮标具有强大的数据管理和显示系统，最近被部署在新斯科舍省的贝德福德盆地，以补充贝德福德海洋研究所的贝德福德盆地浮游生物监测计划，该计划是一个为期16年的时间序列（每周），记录加拿大大西洋沿岸最受研究的浮游生物生态系统的状态。重新命名的贝德福德盆地海洋监测浮标增加了物理、化学和生物变化的连续测量，代表了贝德福德盆地时间序列的转型改进；反过来，贝德福德海洋研究所提供的持续的每周采样提供了宝贵的真实数据和额外的测量，为连续的（有时是间接的）海洋变化测量增加了巨大的价值。时间序列站现在是研究沿海生态系统以及如何有效监测它们的独特资源。新整合的监测项目使用了一个浮标，由于结冰，这个浮标不能在新斯科舍省沿海水域最活跃的早春部署。此外，它缺乏通常在沿海水域测量的硝酸盐和一些水质参数的自动测量。我们要求设备提供这些缺失的功能，从而建立一个最先进的海岸观测系统，以支持丰富和持续的合作研究计划。

Recently, a 6-year program of research and development, "Interdisciplinary Marine Environmental Prediction In The Atlantic Region", terminated after successfully demonstrating an integrated, interdisciplinary coastal observation and modeling system that reported data and forecasts to users and researchers in near-real time with innovative web-based resources. This was a first for Canada, and one of the first in the world. One of the project's legacies, an instrumented telemetered buoy with a potent system for data management and presentation, was recently deployed in Bedford Basin, Nova Scotia to complement the Bedford Institute of Oceanography's Bedford Basin Plankton Monitoring Program, a 16-year time series (weekly) of the state of the plankton ecosystem in Atlantic Canada's best studied coastal embayment. The addition of continuous measurements of physical, chemical and biological variability from the renamed Bedford Basin Ocean Monitoring Buoy represents a transformational improvement to the Bedford Basin time series; in turn, continued weekly sampling provided by the Bedford Institute of Oceanography provides valuable ground-truth data and additional measurements that add tremendous value to the continuous, but sometimes indirect, measures of ocean variability. The time-series station is now a unique resource for research on coastal ecosystems and how they can be effectively monitored. The newly integrated monitoring program uses a buoy that, because of icing, cannot be deployed during the early spring, when the coastal waters of Nova Scotia are most dynamic. Also, it lacks automated measurements of nitrate and some water quality parameters that are commonly measured in coastal waters. We request equipment to provide these missing capabilities, thereby establishing a state-of-the-art coastal observation system in support of a rich and continuing program of collaborative research.