2. Presentations

 

The agenda for the meeting can be found in Appendix A. Mary Lidstrom, UW Vice Provost for Research, made some introductory remarks to open the meeting. She noted the administration's support for NEPTUNE and the Program's potential impact on research and educational activities within the University. She expressed the hope that the meeting would help catalyze long lead-time activities across campus.

 

Overview of NEPTUNE. The first talk was an "Overview of NEPTUNE" presented by John Delaney, Director of the NEPTUNE Program and a UW Professor of Oceanography. After a brief description of the extent and operational goals of the NEPTUNE network, the remainder of the talk was divided into two parts. The first dealt with the scientific motivation for NEPTUNE and related observatories and presented the vision for what NEPTUNE can accomplish over the network's 30-year lifetime. Satellites can monitor long-term processes at the surface of the oceans such as El Ni–o/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), but an interactive observational presence within the oceans will be necessary to understand many processes occurring within the water column and beneath the seafloor. The oceans represent a major sink for CO₂ and studies of carbon cycling in the oceans are important components of climate change research. To illustrate the potential capabilities of NEPTUNE, John Delaney described the use of autonomous underwater vehicles and genomic sensors within the NEPTUNE network to monitor a microbial bloom within its physical oceanographic framework.

NEPTUNE will also play an important role in understanding a variety of subseafloor processes, including plate-tectonic processes that lead to a major seismic hazard along Cascadia subduction zone and processes that form gas hydrate deposits on the continental shelf and slope. NEPTUNE will play a critical role in understanding how seafloor volcanoes support chemosynthetic life both above and below the seafloor, and their potential role in the early evolution of life on Earth and other planetary bodies. John described aspects of the work he has undertaken with Deborah Kelley and other colleagues at the UW to study the black smoker hydrothermal vents at the Endeavour and how NEPTUNE could expand this research.

 

The second part of this talk covered the history and current status of the NEPTUNE program. NEPTUNE Canada has received $62.4M from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund and will install the northern third of the network in 2007/8. The US component of the infrastructure will be supported by the regional cabled observatory component of the NSF Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), which is overseen by the Ocean Research Interactive Observatory Networks (ORION) program. The OOI has been recommended for funding by NSF's Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction account. Over the course of six years, the regional cabled observatory on the Juan de Fuca plate (likely NEPTUNE) is slated to receive about half the ~$300M that has been requested to acquire facilities that will further coastal, regional and global oceanographic observatory studies. The OOI has cleared all the hurdles for funding short of appropriation and the first year of funding forms part of President Bush's FY2007 budget request to Congress. John noted that the MREFC account is likely to fund only acquisition of the cabled observatory backbone infrastructure. It is important to begin aggressive efforts to secure funding to operate the network and deploy the full array of experiments proposed for NEPTUNE. The UW has played the central role in the development of the NEPTUNE concept and will compete aggressively to lead a consortium to build and operate the US portion of the system. The University's intellectual breadth and geographic proximity make the UW ideally suited to lead the NEPTUNE Program.

 

Ecogenomic Sensors. Ginger Armbrust is a UW Associate Professor in the School of Oceanography and Deirdre Meldrum is a UW Professor of Electrical Engineering and they gave a joint presentation on "Ecogenomic Sensors". Ginger Armbrust spoke first. Ecogenomic sensors are biological sensors that detect which microorganisms are present and what they are doing. The oceans are currently a net sink in the global carbon cycle and it is important to understand the role of marine microorganisms. Efforts are presently under way to characterize and catalog the genes of communities of marine microorganisms. Although some capabilities already exist to characterize the genetic makeup and functions of microorganisms in real time, many techniques are still in development and need transitioning from the lab to real time sensors. The technology is evolving very rapidly towards smaller, faster, and more accurate techniques and within a decade it will likely be feasible to analyze single cells and sequence a genome for ~$1000.

 

Deirdre Meldrum introduced the audience to the Microscale Life Sciences Center (MLSC), an NIH National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) Center of Excellence in Genomic Science. The goal of MLSC is to develop microscale modules to measure multiple parameters in living cells in real time in order to correlate cellular events with genomic information. One example of the work in MLSC is the development of a technique to measure the oxygen consumption of individual cells using a microwell sensor array chip. Deidre Meldrum concluded the talk by describing the concept of sensorbot swarms that would be hosted by a seafloor observatory and would make simultaneous water column measurements in time and controlled space.

 

MARS. Keith Raybould is the Chief Operations Officer at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and the Project Manager for the installation of the Monterey Accelerated Research System (MARS) cabled observatory. MARS will serve as a test-bed for the NEPTUNE regional cabled observatory. Keith presented an "Overview of MARS". The system comprises a single cabled seafloor node that will be located 50 km offshore in Monterey Bay and that will provide 100 Mbit/s bi-directional telemetry and a total of 10 kW of power to 8 science ports. It can be expanded in the future. The seafloor node is designed to be trawl resistant and its development has been somewhat delayed and is expected to be installed in Fall 2006. The permitting process has been quite difficult , requiring interactions with multiple agencies and interest groups. The cable landing will require horizontal directional drilling over a distance ~1 mile. The cable and node will be installed by Alcatel/MariPro in 2006. Keith concluded by listing the lessons learned from the MARS system. Disciplined systems engineering is critical. When work is apportioned between institutions, the interfaces must be clearly defined, good mechanisms for quality control must be established, and there must be frequent face-to-face contact between participants. Some costs in the MARS project were very hard to control because the system that had not been fully specified at the time the commercial contracts were signed. The lessons learned from MARS will contribute substantially to the successful implementation of the regional cabled observatory.

 

Engineering of Ocean Observatories. Gary Harkins, Department Head of Electronic Systems at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory, and Bruce Howe, Principal Oceanographer at APL, talked about NEPTUNE and the "Engineering of Ocean Observatories". Ocean observatories must supply the continuous power, communications, timing and navigation necessary to support long-term sensor networks. The best examples of the approach necessary for regional observatories are given by NEPTUNE Canada and MARS. Cabled observatories can be subdivided into the 1) backbone infrastructure comprising the primary junction boxes/primary nodes, main cable, and coastal shore station, and 2) sensor networks that connect sensors via tertiary and secondary nodes to the primary nodes. For NEPTUNE, most of the initial infrastructure costs will be associated with the backbone, but over its lifetime the costs of sensor networks and operations and maintenance will dominate. Some critical elements of the backbone still require further development including the observatory control system, "T" junctions, and extension cables used in sensor networks. It is important to optimize the design of the backbone to reduce operations and maintenance costs and thus minimize the total cost of the system. Gary and Bruce discussed several examples of sensor network infrastructure including a ridge observatory at Axial Volcano and a profiling mooring. They discussed the challenges of acoustic navigation and positioning, and some potential applications of acoustic imaging. There is a critical need to develop reliable long-term sensors for many scientific applications, and sensor designs must account for calibration and biofouling. The talk concluded by highlighting some of the long-term engineering challenges of building effective sensor networks.

 

Cyberinfrastructure for Ocean Cabled Observatories. Larry Smarr is the Director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology and the Harry E. Gruber Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Along with John Orcutt at UCSD, John Delaney and Ed Lazowska at the UW, and Mark Abbott at Oregon State University, Smarr is a principal investigator on the LOOKING (Laboratory for the Ocean Observatory Knowledge Integration Grid) Project, an NSF-funded effort to develop a prototype cyberinfrastructure for the ORION Program. His presentation was entitled "Cyberinfrastructure for Ocean Cabled Observatories". The underlying message of the talk was that ongoing increases in computer network throughput will radically alter the nature of global scientific collaboration. He described the architecture for data acquisition from complex seafloor sensor networks and the CalIT² Direct Access Core architecture for supporting access and in situ analysis of massive instrumental datasets. Wavelength division multiplexing is leading to dramatic increases in the throughput of optical networks. The National Lambda Rail (NLR) and TeraGrid networks provide multiple 10 Gbit/s lambdas (wavelengths) and have enabled demonstrations such as remote brain imaging using real time HDTV image steering and a live HDTV presentations across the Pacific Ocean. Tiled walls of high-resolution monitors allow streaming of extremely high-resolution video, portions of which can be captured and transmitted to web browsers over the National Lambda Rail. Scientific interactions with large databases will be revolutionized by combining telepresence with remote interactive analysis of data over the NLR. Throughout the talk Larry Smarr repeatedly emphasized that the cyberinfrastucture envisioned and being developed by NEPTUNE and the ORION program is well in advance of most other scientific fields.

 

Learning Opportunities Through NEPTUNE. Veronique Robigou is a research scientist at the UW School of Oceanography and the Director of the NSF-funded REVEL project and COSEE – Ocean Learning Communities Center. Philip Bell is a UW Associate Professor of cognition and technology who focuses most of his research on issues of science education in the College of Education. He directs the efforts of the "Everyday science and technology" research group and is one of the co-Leads on the LIFE Center (Learning in Informal and Formal Environments Center). Their talk was entitled "Learning Opportunities Through NEPTUNE (part 1 & part 2)." NEPTUNE research will be conducted in an environment that is engaging to a diverse community of learners.

 

Veronique's presentation highlighted two types of programs that could provide collaborative opportunities with the NEPTUNE community. The University of Washington has just been awarded a grant by the National Science Foundation to establish a thematic Center for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (COSEE). This NSF-sponsored initiative is building a national network of centers that provide a catalytic environment for partnerships between ocean scientists and educators by fostering communication and coordination between these two groups. The centers also promote ocean sciences education as a charismatic interdisciplinary tool for improving ocean literacy. The COSEE – Ocean Learning Communities, a collaborative effort led by the University of Washington, is the first center to involve partnerships with industry. The center will initially focus on using Oceans and Human Health to develop approaches to better understand the process of creating effective collaborations involving non-traditional stakeholders. Once these approaches are tested, the center will focus on other scientific themes important to ocean literacy. Ocean observatory science issues will likely be among them.

 

The REVEL (Research and Education: Volcanoes, Exploration and Life) Program is a personal and professional development program for K-12 teachers who are eager to bring ocean science research into their classrooms. The REVEL teachers participate as members of the scientific party in a seagoing research cruise where they are fully immersed in the research process. They attend pre- and post-cruise workshops, organize a lecture series and web site while at sea, and are supported to incorporate their experience into classroom activities and other outreach activities. REVEL-type experiences have the potential to incorporate teachers and their students as active participants in and contributors to NEPTUNE scientific studies.

 

Philip Bell started his presentation by referencing a new report from the National Academy of Sciences entitled "America's Lab Report: Investigations in High School Science." Science labs in American schools are often focused only on the prescriptive confirmation of established scientific concepts as opposed to providing a context for inquiry and learning. Instead science labs should be an environment in which students undertake a simplified "knowledge discovery" process. High-quality, publicly available data from distributed sensor networks such as the NEPTUNE cabled observatory can be productively analyzed by students if learner-centered design is used. Two examples of programs that seek to do this are the Geographic Data in Education (GEODE) Initiative and the Web-based Inquiry Science (WISE) environment (http://wise.berkeley.edu). There are several consensus reports on what we know about learning and teaching, but additional research is required on the educational uses of large data sets. The Learning in Informal and Formal Environments (LIFE) Center (http://life-slc.org) was one of the first four Science of Learning Centers to be funded by NSF. The Center's purpose is to create and test interdisciplinary theories of learning for infants, children, and adults across informal and formal settings in order to explore the multiple ways in which learning and transfer occur.

 

Regional Policy Context and Opportunities for NEPTUNE. Marc Hershman is a UW Professor in the School of Marine Affairs and a member of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy (USCOP). His presentation was entitled "Regional Policy Context and Opportunities for NEPTUNE." The USCOP preliminary report recommends the establishment of regional ocean information programs "to improve coordination and set regional priorities for research, data collection, science-based information products, and outreach activities in support of improved ocean and coastal management." USCOP has overseen the formation of an Interagency Committee On Ocean Science and Resource Management Integration, a National Science and Technology Council Joint Subcommittee on Ocean Science and Technology (JSOST), and a Subcommittee on Integrated Management of Ocean Resources (SIMOR). Each west coast state has also established bodies to consider ocean policy and protection issues. By the end of 2006, JSOST will develop a national marine research plan with input from SIMOR, and SIMOR will establish a joint federal state task team. The west coast submission for the research plan includes fisheries conservation, nearshore ecology, anthropogenic effects on coastal ecosystems, coastal hazards and shoreline processes, regional ocean processes and climate change, and marine science outreach. NEPTUNE should engage state and local political interests to avoid the fear of the unknown and define the potential benefits including informational products that are relevant to management, economic benefits and educational opportunities. There may be opportunities for collaboration such as the Washington State Life Sciences Discovery Fund.

 

Citizens (Governance), Science and Policy. Tom Leschine is the Director of the School of Marine Affairs and spoke on "Citizens (Governance), Science and Policy." He started his talk by noting that there are a number of factors that influence the use of scientific information in policy including the utility of the information, the forum in which its pertinence is deliberated, the capacity of the governance system to assimilate information and economic value of incorporating information. A recent technical report published by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution estimated the regional benefit of ocean observing systems and concluded that the largest benefits would accrue to recreational boaters, fishers and beachgoers because of the large number of participants. The goal of NEPTUNE should be to provide an integrated assessment of the reciprocal impacts and feedbacks between natural and human social systems with the management goal of promoting resilience in coupled human-environmental systems. The interactions between humans and natural systems will be non-linear and it will be necessary to develop the capacity for scale translation so that changes detected at broad spatial and temporal scales can be translated to local implications that are relevant to future managers.

 

VISIONS05 Cruise and the Challenges of Work in Extreme Environments. Deborah Kelley is an Associate Professor in the School of Oceanography and opened the second morning with a talk on "VISIONS05 Cruise and the Challenges of Work in Extreme Environments." Deborah and John Delaney were co-chief scientists on VISIONS'05 cruise (www.visions05.washington.edu), which sailed in September of this year to the Endeavour hydrothermal vents. Deborah described the scientific research that was being conducted at this site to understand the linkages between physical, chemical and biological processes at mid-ocean ridge hydrothermal systems and the role of submarine volcanoes in supporting life. With funding from the W. M. Keck Foundation, the University of Washington is leading a prototype NEPTUNE experiment to investigate the linkages between geological deformation, fluids fluxes through the seafloor, and microbial productivity at oceanic plate boundaries. The VISIONSÔ05 cruise was the first to send real-time high-definition video images of the seafloor via satellite and the spectacular footage of the seafloor vents was broadcast live by the ResearchChannel. The VISIONS'05 cruise demonstrated the potential media impact of real-time data streams from the NEPTUNE system.

 

NEPTUNE Canada. Brian Bornhold is a Professor at the University of Victoria and a co-chief scientist of the NEPTUNE Canada project, the topic of his talk. After a brief general introduction to the NEPTUNE concept he showed the current plans for the NEPTUNE Phase 1 (NEPTUNE Canada) backbone and listed the NEPTUNE Canada partner institutions and members of the project team. NEPTUNE Canada has chosen to focus on five research themes: plate tectonic processes and earthquake dynamics; dynamic processes of fluid fluxes and gas hydrates in the seabed; regional oceanic/climate dynamics and effects on the marine biota; deep-sea ecosystem dynamics; and engineering and computational research. He described the acquisition plan for both the cable network infrastructure and scientific instrumentation. The backbone and some instrumentation will be installed in 2007 with the remainder of the instrumentation installed in 2008. At present the project has received $62.4M Canadian from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund. This is sufficient to install a system with two scientific nodes at Endeavour and Barkley Canyon and two breakout points at the Ocean Drilling Project Holes 889 and 1027 where scientific nodes could be easily installed in the future when funding is available. A pending proposal for an additional $20M Canadian would substantially expand the scope of the initial science experiments.

 

Educational Opportunities. Patricia Wasley is Dean of the UW College of Education. She spoke briefly and then answered questions about the role the College of Education can play in NEPTUNE. In terms of the number of teachers trained, the UW ranks behind other institutions in the state such as Western Washington University. However, by taking advantage of our status as a major research institution and targeting the science coordinators and other key personnel in each school district, the UW could have a major impact on science education in the state. The College of Education is currently searching for a director for the UW Institute for Science and Mathematics Education. The broad goal of the institute is to advance science, mathematics, and technology education at the pre-school to graduate level within the University, the state, and nationally. The NEPTUNE program can be an important part of this process.