OOI Science Plan: Exciting Opportunities using OOI Data
of new and more precise predictive models, and increasing public understanding of the ocean will all be tangible measures of the OOI’s contribution to transforming ocean science.
Version 1.1
Division of Ocean Sciences formed the Dynamics of Earth and Oceans Systems (DEOS) Committee in 2001, to start planning what would become the OOI. The OOI design for seafloor and water column observatories developed from two main technical directions: submarine cable observatories to provide power and Internet connectivity from land; and moored observatories that provide locally generated power to seafloor, water column, and meteorological instruments, and use a satellite link to send data back to land via the Internet. In addition, the integration of mobile assets, such as gliders and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), were recognized as essential to provide information on mesoscale variability.
C. Project History Tthe OOI is based upon a community vision resulting from two decades of workshops, meetings, and reports, which established science drivers for the proposed infrastructure investment. In 1988, the ocean sciences community began discussions about the science, design concepts, and engineering of ocean research observatories. During the 1990s, workshops were held on a variety of topics, including undersea cables, seafloor observatories, and moored buoys. In addition, NSF held a series of disciplinary workshops, culminating in the Ocean Sciences at the New Millennium report in 2001. The report noted the difficulties in adequately sampling the ocean due to its size and limited access by ships. As a result, the ocean has in the past been under sampled. Although satellite oceanography has provided increasingly accurate measurements of the ocean surface layer, in situ observations are critical to understanding the ocean interior. The Ocean Sciences at the New Millennium report recommended a national effort to support sustained high-quality global observations over decades, given recent developments in instrumentation and computational resources needed for such an endeavor. High-frequency measurements were considered essential to investigate a range of science questions from climate change to non-equilibrium ecosystem dynamics to underwater volcanic eruptions and geochemical cycling between the solid earth and the hydrosphere.
Two National Research Council (NRC) reports (NRC, 2000; NRC, 2003) and 14 nationally circulated science and technical reports reflect the broad community involvement in planning the OOI (see Figure 1.2 for a summary of major milestones in OOI history). Two high-visibility documents, the Pew Ocean Commission’s 2003 report (The Pew Ocean Commission, 2003), America’s Living Oceans: Charting a Course for Sea Change, and the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy’s 2004 report, An Ocean Blueprint for the 21st Century (U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, 2004), also highlighted the importance of science-driven ocean observing. In 2007, the National Science and Technology Council’s Joint Subcommittee on Ocean Science and Technology issued the report, Charting the Course for Ocean Science for the United States for the Next Decade: An Ocean Research Priorities Plan and Implementation Strategy, which identified the OOI’s key role in addressing near-term national priorities (NSTC JSOST, 2007). The Millennium Report and other reports mentioned above provided a framework of strategic science questions that were refined by participants in numerous OOI workshops. These reports, workshops, and planning efforts led to the vision of three observatory scales—coastal, regional, and global—within one distributed, integrated network. The National Research Council report, Enabling Ocean Research in the 21st Century: Implementation of a Network of Ocean Observatories, articulated the OOI goals
In 1998, the National Ocean Partnership Program (NOPP) funded an engineering study of the cabled component, which was called NEPTUNE at that time. The report, which was released in June 2000, documented that the cabled observatory was scientifically driven and technologically feasible, consisting primarily of commercially available system components. In October 2000, the National Science Board approved the OOI as a Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) account project. The NSF 10
