NSF Award
2421112
This award provides an additional three years of support for the Oceanic Flux Program (OFP). The OFP was established in 1978 to measure the export flux of particles from the surface to the deep ocean in the deep Sargasso Sea near Bermuda. The OFP is the longest and most continuous particle flux time-series of its kind. Through collaboration with nearby upper ocean time-series programs, facilities, and other Bermuda-based sampling programs, OFP will continue to be a valuable resource for the oceanographic community in the effort to answer questions about the intricate relationship between deep ocean particle flux and climate, as well as biological, physical, and chemical oceanographic processes. Looking to the future, OFP will use increasingly advanced instrumentation and state-of-the-art analytical tools to investigate the nature and patterns of the material that sinks from the surface to deep ocean and the mechanisms that drive that process. The OFP provides education and training for students from high school to Ph.D. levels and supports early career researchers. OFP data and samples are broadly available to other researchers across the scientific disciplines.<br/><br/>Two overarching goals drive core activities funded under the OFP grant. The first is to extend the time-series by collecting new samples of the highest quality, while ensuring they have a comprehensive oceanographic context. The second is to elucidate the processes that drive oceanic particle flux through comparative studies of flux magnitude and composition with concurrent observations of external forcing (e.g., synoptic scale meteorology, climate patterns), surface water physics and biology (e.g., mesoscale features, blooms), and interior processes (e.g., biological particle aggregation/disaggregation, elemental scavenging, authigenic mineralization). The specific grant objectives are: (1) to provide for continuity of the particle flux measurements at 500, 1500 and 3200 m depths and continue to refine the quality of the time-series record and expand its oceanographic context, (2) to update/calibrate OFP sample processing and analytical methods to enhance the time-series data record, and to curate the time-series sample archives for future study, (3) to promote collaborative research to maximize interdisciplinary information obtained from the samples, (4) to conduct focused studies to identify deep flux temporal trends and their coherence with upper ocean forcing, to elucidate causal flux generation processes, and to develop proxies for climate studies, <br/>(5) to provide education and training opportunities. A particular focus of this funding cycle will be to analyze the extensive OFP digital image archive with an automated (and/or semi-automated) approach, including classical methodologies and Deep Learning (DL) based tools for image classification, segmentation and archive, and a Graphical User Interface (GUI). The development of these new tools for identification, quantification, and characterization of the flux material will better exploit the image archive’s potential, as fuller characterization of biological components will contribute new information on the ecosystem dynamics and responses to environmental forcing that drive flux generation.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
