The Physical Oceanography Observing Laboratory (POOL) of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is a virtual facility that maintains and provides moored instrumentation to U.S. investigators conducting research supported by the National Science Foundation. Companion groups at WHOI construct mooring elements, go to sea to deploy and recover moorings and, if requested by the principal investigator, extract and process the data from the moored instrumentation and make them ready for scientific analysis. The present inventory of POOL instrumentation is fully committed to ongoing projects, so POOL will be unable to support any new initiatives in the coming several years. The PI's requests funding to enhance and renew WHOI POOL instrumentation to replace some aging equipment a single mooring system, an array that can be flexibly deployed to accommodate the sampling requirements for a broad range of phenomenon. The WHOI POOL has been developed to support researchers throughout the country wishing to make time-series measurements of the ocean. The acquisition of the proposed instrumentation will significantly improve the ability of WHOI's technical groups to support leading-edge research.
Broader Impacts
A wide range of NSF-funded projects will require the services that will be available through the proposed activities. It is stated that the new inventory of equipment proposed for purchase will aid the physical oceanography community in a variety of projects in the future, and not just researchers at WHOI. There is no question that large or small institution- graduate and undergraduate students' exposure to modern instrumentation is a plus for the proposed acquisition. This is especially important for smaller institutions, which rely on WHOI to supply and maintain a suite of measurement hardware.
Principal Investigators: John M. Toole, Michael S. McCartney, Paula S. Fratantoni, Robert S. Pickart and Steven R. Jayne Affiliation: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Period of Performance: October 1, 2010 to September 30, 2012. Funding: $1,397,225 Cost sharing: $598,811 The Physical Oceanography Observing Laboratory (POOL) of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is a virtual facility that maintains and provides ocean instrumentation to U.S. investigators conducting research supported by the National Science Foundation. The specific focus of POOL is on maintaining an inventory of sensors (and associated mechanical components) that are deployed in the ocean for long time periods (commonly one to two years) and are subsequently recovered to extract the information that they logged over time. These sensors are typically mounted on moorings: systems that consist of buoyancy elements, a tether held vertical by that flotation and an anchor that keeps systems in place (see schematic drawing). Companion groups at WHOI construct those mooring components that are not reusable, go to sea to deploy and recover moorings and extract and process the data from the moored instrumentation and make them ready for scientific analysis. The POOL is an offshoot of the WHOI Buoy Group that was created 50 years ago to advance ocean mooring technology and support scientific field studies that used these systems. To a large extent, the ocean sciences are driven by observations. The WHOI POOL was developed to support researchers throughout the country wishing to make time-series measurements from the ocean. An important element of this support activity is the introduction of graduate and undergraduate students through their academic advisors to state-of-the-art ocean observations without the requirement that those educators develop their own instrumentation facilities. The benefits of an open facility providing access to modern oceanographic instrumentation and mooring systems also hold for junior scientists and under-represented minorities who might lack access to resources and technical expertise to conduct ocean observations. National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation grant number OCE-1039703 funded the purchase of a variety of oceanographic sensors and mooring components needed to expand capability and to replace aging instruments that are no longer practical to maintain. The acquired equipment is detailed in the attached table. Much of this equipment has already been fielded in support of NSF-funded field programs. Going forward, the WHOI POOL will be responsible for maintaining this equipment and scheduling its use, the latter in consultation with project Principal Investigators and NSF program managers.
