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 request includes one item/system:
1) Nitrate Analyzer
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 University of Minnesota purchased a nitrate sensor for the research vessel Blue Heron using funds provided by the National Science Foundation in grant OCE-1013255 ‘Oceanographic Instrumentation, R/V Blue Heron 2010’. Nitrate has been increasing in Great Lakes waters for decades, mostly through within lake biogeochemical processes. Using the new nitrate sensor on the research vessel’s underway water sampling system as well as intermittently on the vessel’s CTD/Carousel water sampling gear will allow researchers that use the vessel to determine the biogeochemical pathways that are leading to the increase in nitrate and allow researchers to gauge any impact that increased nitrate will have on Great Lakes biota. 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. Over the last year three projects funded by NSF have used the nitrate sensor: J. Finlay, OCE-0927512 ‘Sources and sinks of stoichiometrically imbalanced nitrate in the Laurentian Great Lakes’; E. Minor, OCE/CO-0825600 ‘How Important is "old" Carbon in Lake Superior? A Radiocarbon Investigation’; and S. Katsev, OCE/CO-0961720 ‘Transient diagenesis in organic poor sediments: Lake Superior’.
