Lecture 22: Deployment strategies for different optical sampling platforms: mobile platforms (AKA “ALPS) What are mobile platforms? Why use them? Some case studies! ALPS report, Rudnick and Perry (2003), prose.com/ALPS/alps_rpt_ pdf Special Issue of L&O (2008) on science from mobile platforms
What are mobile platforms? *Autonomous, mobile platforms without tether to ship or land; include surface drifters, profiling floats, AUVs, gliders * Sensors – small, robust, often low-power – measure water column physics, optics, biology, chemistry and sea floor properties * Wireless communication – two-way * Networks of sensing systems Why use them? * Sampling is the central observational problem in oceanography * Wide range of scales requires “scalable”observational systems * Global questions require observational systems to be “long-lived” * Intermittent and regional questions require observational systems to be “portable”
Surface drifter – (near) surface; good for Rrs; go with flow; more susceptible to biofouling Biofouling; Abbott ratio 683/555 as indicator of biofouling; why? No optics in Surface Velocity Drifter Programme –lost opportunity? Succession of sensors (plastic pouch & bolt cutting)?
Floats – go with the flow; can park at depth to minimize biofouling ; “lite” models to pick-up truck size; weeks to years Mitchell, Solo float spring bloom, Sea of Japan, 3-channel Ed –> Kd 490 How would biofouling affect Kd?
Bishop – beam c (Carbon Explorer) So. Ocean Fe fertilization How would you verify that c ~ POC?
Boss – ARGO float in Labrador Sea: b b and chl F
ARGO oxygen white paper: Model for bio-float array ?
Checkley – SOLOPC optical plankton counter on SOLO float diel patterns ~ 100 m – 10 mm large cells, zooplankton, flocs very different particle size structure on float vs. CTD mounted ––> role of aggregates in ocean dynamics
Gliders – lowest payload but long duration (to 7 months); add more sensors, increase drag,decrease mission length; goes slowly (neither Eulerian nor Langragian) climatology of deep chl max
Rutgers Cool Room New Jersey coast: beam c and b b to identify nephloid layers
AUVsome very large; heavy payload but short duration; goes where you want Moline: Repeat transects of bioluminescence potential off California with three time scales: A) months B) week C) day
Kirkpatrick – Breve buster
Floats + gliders – multiple spatial scales, redundancy of sensors Floats – Ed, Lu, ISUS nitrate, beam c, bb, chl F, T, S, O 2 Gliders – T, S, O 2, chl F, 2 bb
Future needs * New platforms - hybrid glider/AUV, large recoverable floats, small water-following floats * New and smaller sensors – more variables (turbulence, nutrients, trace metals, dissolved gases, molecular sensing, zooplankton) – redundancy of variables – ability to go deeper (avoid biofoul; deep water “val”) * Adaptive sampling and control; multiple platforms * Improved communications – cheaper * Biofouling and internal calibration * Water sampling – for unique samples and validation * Greater accessibility