NEPTUNE Workshop, June 5, 2006, noon to 5 pm, UW Campus, HUB 310
The invitation below was issued by John Delaney, Director of NEPTUNE. The final report from this workshop will be posted here when complete.
Dear Colleagues:
There is exciting news about the NSF Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI): the ramifications for NEPTUNE are very substantial. In early February, the Bush Administration submitted its 2007 budget to Congress. The NSF budget called for the OOI to begin in 2007 with $13.5 M to be allocated the first year. The OOI would be supported from the Major Research Equipment Facilities Construction Fund (MREFC), which is specifically identified as a source of substantial funding for ‘one-time only capital investment of transformational infrastructure to allow entire communities to take a major step in their research capabilities.
As requested, the funds will have a 6-year run-out, apportioning nearly $ 310 M over that period. As currently envisioned, slightly less than half that amount will be spent on implementation of a Regional Cabled Observatory (RCO) located off the Washington-Oregon-BC coastline. We are doing all in our power to see that the OOI program stays in the FY07 budget. The funds will be primarily used for infrastructural investment. In general, scientific experiments and widespread educational uses of the new facility will be covered from other sources both within NSF and outside.
This RCO installation is patterned strongly after the concept of NEPTUNE, developed by University of Washington researchers and their colleagues across the country and in Canada (University of Victoria). The area to be covered by this first RCO includes the most of the Juan de Fuca Plate and proximal portions of its adjoining plates, the full depth of the overlying ocean including the air-sea interface, and portions of underlying sub-seafloor accessed by numerous instrumented Ocean Drilling Program boreholes. Consistent with our initial partnering agreement, UVic was funded in October, 2003 at ~Can$ 60 M to build the northern portion of the RCO system.
The Canadian NEPTUNE portion is intended to be operational in 2008-9, and, if all goes well, the US component will be operational in 2012-13. The national OOI oversight group, representing NSF, is named ORION (Ocean Research Interactive Observatory Network) and is currently under the auspices of the Joint Oceanographic Institutions, Inc. They will issue a Request for Proposals in a May-June, 2006, timeframe inviting academic institutions partnered with industry to compete for becoming the Implementing Organization (IO) for construction and operation of the RCO. The University of Washington will compete for the opportunity to become the IO for the US portion of the RCO.
The electro-optical network of the RCO will provide considerable power and ~10 Gb band width continuously (24/7/365) for decades throughout the area described above. This system will launch a new era of ocean science in which investigators will have continuous interactive surveillance throughout the entire ocean volume and sub seafloor with the capability to detect, respond to, characterize, sample and model a broad spectrum of linked activities ranging over many scales of time and space. We will be able to interact with processes ranging from energetic, episodic events like erupting volcanoes and giant storms, to longer-term, more subtle variations in ocean conditions that require sustained measurement to define significant change. Hundreds, eventually thousands, of robotically responsive arrays of sensor platforms will communicate with, and/or be directed by, interested user communities across the Internet.
Potential Investigators are invited to propose experiments on the RCO system, to NSF, or to any other agency or foundation that supports cutting edge research or education using novel platforms. We are especially interested in working closely with researchers who have traditionally worked in the ‘Coastal Oceanography’ areas nearer shore. And it is our intent to integrate our efforts with the Pacific Northwest component of the Integrated Ocean Observing System, known as NANOOS.
We also hope to forge strong bonds with local industry groups to move this program forward on many fronts. It is envisioned that mobile platforms such as Gliders, Drifters and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles will be integral parts of this research capability to empower sustained studies of many co-located processes and phenomena over periods long enough to fully characterize the complexity of linkages and feed-back loops involved in many processes operative within the ocean basins.
Please join us on Monday afternoon, June 5, in the upper campus HUB Room 310 for a synthesis and planning session on how the program is evolving and how you can participate in the efforts to use this new facility for earth and ocean research and education. Local organizers of the NEPTUNE program will be holding a half-day meeting to update the UW community on recent developments in the NEPTUNE program. William Wilcock is the lead organizer for the workshop.
Prior meetings have identified groups of interested researchers on the UW campus. During this meeting we hope to broaden and solidify those groups. As an outcome of this meeting we want to initiate formation of expert groups who will take advantage of the opportunities implicit in this program to seek early funding for the development of innovative, long-term experiments or cutting edge educational approaches that will fully utilize the capabilities of the capabilities of the RCO.
Lunch will be available for registered participants from 12-1 PM and the meeting will run from 1-5 PM
If you wish to attend this meeting, please send e-mail to neptune@apl.washington.edu to indicate whether you plan to attend for the entire afternoon, or whether you are only able to come for lunch. Also, we request that you indicate whether you wish to continue to be on the mailing list for new ORION-RCO-NEPTUNE developments.
I sincerely hope that you will join us for what promises to be lively discussions on this exciting future.
John R. Delaney
Director of NEPTUNE
Useful Web Materials are available at:
The report from the November 2005 UW meeting, authored by William Wilcock, can be found at
www.neptune.washington.edu/workshops/index.jsp?keywords=UW2005&title=UW%202005
