This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
A request is made to fund additional and back-up instrumentation for the R/V Blue Heron, an 86 foot Coastal vessel owned by the University of Minnesota and operated by the Large Lakes Observatory as part of the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) research fleet. The award includes three items:
1) Sediment Traps 2) Fluoroprobe 3) Kullenberg Coring System
Broader Impacts: The acquisition, maintenance and operation of shared-use instrumentation allows NSF-funded researchers from any US university or lab access to working, calibrated instruments for their research, reducing the cost of that research, and expanding the base of potential researchers. The addition of the sampling equipment coupled with underway seawater analysis tools and a sediment sampling device will enhance the capabilities of R/V Blue Heron, the only vessel working under the UNOLS umbrella in the Great Lakes, to support a wide range of marine scientific disciplines.
