Proposal Number: 1118204 Institution: University of Minnesota Duluth PI: R. Ricketts
This proposal requests one Shipboard Scientific Support Equipment (SSSE) item for the R/V BLUE HERON; namely a new dual frequency echo sounder. This item will enhance navigational safety and provide greatly improved science support capabilities.
Broader Impacts: The University of Minnesota supports federally-funded scientific research on the Great Lakes and routinely exposes graduate and undergraduate students to the marine sciences. The R/V BLUE HERON is scheduled to complete over 50 NSF sponsored days in 2011.
The University of Minnesota purchased a dual frequency echosounder for the research vessel Blue Heron using funds provided by the National Science Foundation in grant OCE-1118204 ‘Shipboard Scientific Support Equipment, 2011, R/V Blue Hero ’. Our older echosounding unit interfered with acoustic based scientific instrumentation on board the vessel such as our multibeam and sidescan. During our 2010 JMS Naval Architects/NSF inspection, the inspection team recommended that we replace our older unit with a new dual frequency echo sounder. Equipment purchased for the R/V Blue Heron is used by researchers that use the vessel as a research platform. Therefore, the equipment is available to all users of the vessel, from scientists funded by the National Science Foundation to University of Minnesota classes that take students out on the vessel to learn about oceanographic research. During the 2012 and 2013 season, six projects funded by NSF used the dual-frequency echosounder: J. Austin, OCE-1126453 ‘Acquisition of two autonomous moored profilers for lake ecosystem research’; J. Austin, OCE-0825633 ‘The role of ice in the response of large lakes to a changing climate’; J. Finlay, OCE-0927512 ‘Sources and sinks of stoichiometrically imbalanced nitrate in the Laurentian Great Lakes’; S. Katsev, OCE-0961720 ‘Transient diagenesis in organic poor sediments: Lake Superior’; E. Minor, OCE-1235379 ‘A dual dye approach to measuring in situ light fields: Development and preliminary field testing’; and C. Troy, OCE-1030842, ‘Dispersion and mixing caused by near-inertial internal waves in Lake Michigan’.
