Neil Armstrong

NES-LTER cross-shelf transect cruises are conducted between Martha’s Vineyard and the continental shelf break directly south. The overarching goal of the NES-LTER is to understand and predict how planktonic food webs change through space and time in response to changes in the physical environment, and how those changes impact ecosystem productivity, including of higher trophic levels. Observations and models are focused on processes and mechanisms that structure pelagic food webs, trophic transformations, and productivity, as well as the key interactions and feedbacks that modulate relationships among them. NES-LTER transect process cruises are focused on characterizing cross-shelf distributions of physical properties, nutrients, production rates, and plankton. Approximately 11 stations will be occupied in waters depths typically less than 200 m, but up to ~1600 m. Operations will include underway sampling of biological and chemical properties with science-provided instruments, CTD/rosette casts, net tows, on-deck incubations, and deployment of a towed vehicle.

The coastal ocean of the Northeast US is marked by complex circulation patterns on the continental shelf and along the shelfbreak. This region has seen substantial changes recently, including instances of marine heatwaves, biological shifts, and increased shelfbreak exchange events. Although many factors contribute to these changes, increased formation of GS WCRs, in concert with the northward shift in GS position, have resulted in increased interaction between WCRs and shelf topography, dictating shifts in the circulation and stratification structures on the shelf and slope and related biological, chemical, and physical properties in the region. The overarching goal of this project is to c haracterize the structure of a WCR as it interacts with the shelfbreak front, and to identify impacts of this interaction on horizontal transport and vertical mixing of nutrients and phytoplankton. This survey will also serve as a training opportunity for Joint Program students. Project organization and execution will be led by a team of students, with support from WHOI’s Academic Programs Office. The educational goals of this cruise are to (1) provide students with experience using shipboard research techniques that they may encounter in their tenure in the JP, and (2) to serve as a community building opportunity.

This work seeks to recover a previously deployed surface buoy and mooring system offshore of Nantucket, MA which hosted a vertical lidar wind profiler.

First major infrastructure deployment at the Mid-Atlantic Bight, off of North Carolina, for the Pioneer Array of the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). The Pioneer MAB Array includes a network of moorings and autonomous robotic vehicles to monitor the waters of the continental shelf, slope, and the shelf break front where nutrients and other properties are exchanged between the coast and deep ocean. Data from the Pioneer Array will provide new insights into coastal ocean processes such as shelf/slope nutrient exchange, air-sea property exchange, carbon cycling, and ocean acidification that are important to the North Carolina shelf and to continental ecosystems world wide. For further information, see http://www.oceanobservatories.org

NES-LTER cross-shelf transect cruises are conducted between Martha’s Vineyard and the continental shelf break directly south. The overarching goal of the NES-LTER is to understand and predict how planktonic food webs change through space and time in response to changes in the physical environment, and how those changes impact ecosystem productivity, including of higher trophic levels. Observations and models are focused on processes and mechanisms that structure pelagic food webs, trophic transformations, and productivity, as well as the key interactions and feedbacks that modulate relationships among them. NES-LTER transect process cruises are focused on characterizing cross-shelf distributions of physical properties, nutrients, production rates, and plankton. Approximately 11 stations will be occupied in waters depths typically less than 200 m, but up to ~1600 m. Operations will include underway sampling of biological and chemical properties with science-provided instruments, CTD/rosette casts, net tows, on-deck incubations, and deployment of a towed vehicle.

Major infrastructure deployment and servicing cruise for the Pioneer Array of the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). The Pioneer Array includes a network of moorings and autonomous robotic vehicles to monitor waters of the continental shelf and slope NE of Cape Hatteras, NC and the shelf break front where nutrients and other properties are exchanged between the coast and the deep ocean. Data from the Pioneer Array will provide new insights into coastal ocean processes such as shelf/slope nutrient exchange, air-sea property exchange, carbon cycling, and ocean acidification that are important to the Mid-Atlantic Bight shelf, and to continental shelf ecosystems around the world. For further information, see http://www.oceanobservatories.org.

This is an inter-disciplinary effort to study shelfbreak processes, and if possible a shelf streamer around a Warm Core Ring, to investigate circulation and ecosystem connections south of New England. Previous work has shown that streamers of shelf water aggregate marine species, including squid, around the periphery of Warm Core Rings. We would like to test some hypotheses regarding how streamers of shelf water form, their connection to the Shelfbreak Jet upstream, and how acoustic backscatter patterns can be used to define biota within and around the shelf streamer. We will be in close communication with the commercial fishing industry via the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation and the Cooperative Research Branch at NOAA. Results will be shared after the cruise with the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation, the Cooperative Research Branch, and the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen's Alliance. A key motivation is the pattern of upwelling as the streamer forms. A recent Ph.D. thesis (by Jacob Forsyth) suggests that large Warm Core Rings that are in close proximity to the shelfbreak can generate large upwelling rates. Recent tagging efforts led by C. Braun at WHOI have also shown billfish moving within a streamer for large distances.

OSNAP is an international program designed to provide a continuous record of the full-water column, trans-basin fluxes of heat, mass and freshwater in the subpolar North Atlantic. The OSNAP observing system consists of two legs: one extending from southern Labrador to the southwestern tip of Greenland across the mouth of the Labrador Sea (OSNAP West), and the second from the southeastern tip of Greenland to Scotland (OSNAP East). The observing system also includes subsurface floats (OSNAP Floats) in order to trace the pathways of overflow waters in the basin and to assess the connectivity of currents crossing the OSNAP line.

Crossroads is a Lagrangian (float) field program combined with numerical modeling aimed at describing the processes that break or maintain connectivity of the lower limb of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). Crossroads will be embedded in highly complementary field projects by Canadian and European researchers with the same fundamental question regarding connectivity. Specific objective is to determine the processes governing the deep circulation along the western boundary between the subpolar and subtropical North Atlantic—the so-called "transition zone" (TZ), thought to be critical to the latitudinal coherence of the AMOC. We will directly observe the interaction between the deepest layers of the Deep Western Boundary Current (DWBC) with the North Atlantic Current through the TZ by releasing acoustically tracked RAFOS floats in the DWBC east of the Grand Banks at 3000-3800-m depth and track them for two years as they drift through the TZ. The field program is embedded in a complementary hydrographic, Eulerian, and modeling investigation also focused on the connectivity of the DWBC through the TZ funded by the EU "Explaining and Predicting Overturning Circulation" (EPOC) and French "Crossroads" programs, which will be leveraged scientifically and logistically.

To carry out the recovery and redeployment of part of the NSF Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) Irminger Sea Array, servicing two of four moorings an area southeast of Greenland (38-41W, 58-61N). The platforms will carry multidisciplinary instrumentation and provide the capability for real time communication of data and control of sampling. Taut moorings, Flanking Mooring A and Flanking Mooring B will be deployed and the old moorings recovered. 2 CTD casts are requested. One at each flanking mooring site.

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Variability in the transport of heat, freshwater and mass in the North Atlantic has been linked to a number of societally relevant factors including sea level change, the melting of sea and glacial ice, and anthropogenic carbon storage in the deep ocean. However, the current understanding of the drivers of such changes is limited, making an investigation of overturning in the Sub-polar region a key ocean research priority. This field program explicitly addresses this gap. Furthermore, by engaging the larger international community studying the North Atlantic, Overturning in the Sub-polar North Atlantic Program (OSNAP) is playing a key role in catalyzing scientific progress by promoting international collaborations, synthesis, and the sharing of resources and by training future generations. The overall goal of this field project, in conjunction with other measurements in the North Atlantic, is to establish determination of the linkage between intermediate and deep water formation and the overturning circulation--a connection that is present in climate models, but has yet to be observed. This project will also provide the first comprehensive view of spreading pathways for the deep waters in the Sub-polar basin. Starting in 2014, the US-led international project, Overturning in the Sub-polar North Atlantic Program (OSNAP), provides a continuous record of the full-water column, trans-basin fluxes of heat, mass and freshwater in the Sub-polar North Atlantic, in partnership with the UK, Netherlands, Canada, Germany and China. Data from the first 21 months of the full OSNAP observing system has been used to produce an initial time series of the meridional overturning, heat and freshwater fluxes for the Sub-polar basin. These preliminary results reveal a highly variable overturning in the basin, interior pathways for overflow waters, surprisingly energetic boundary current systems on timescales from days to months, and a strong overflow plume in the Iceland Basin. The additional two years of OSNAP observations will cover a time frame sufficient to make comparisons with other overturning time series and optimize the OSNAP measurement system--all necessary tasks prior to a request for longer term measurements. This component of OSNAP (OSNAP East) is for the eastern array between Greenland and Scotland in coordination with the UK and the Netherlands. The US contribution includes the East Greenland inshore and offshore arrays, the Iceland Basin array, and the integration of all OSNAP measurements. The sub-goal for OSNAP East is to quantify the structure and transport of the boundary currents off the east coast of Greenland and within the Iceland Basin, as well as determine their variability and forcing mechanisms.

The Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program (OSNAP) is an international program designed to measure the transport of heat, mass, and freshwater in the subpolar North Atlantic and the associated Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), and to investigate the AMOC’s variability link to dense water formation variability. It includes contributions from scientists in the U.K., Germany, Netherlands, Canada, France and the U.S. One key component of this program are moored arrays maintained across two lines that cut across the subpolar North Atlantic flow: OSNAP West, from the Labrador coast to the southern tip of Greenland, and OSNAP East from the southern tip of Greenland, across the Reykjanes Ridge, and extending all the way to Scotland.The US-contribution for OSNAP includes moorings SE and SW of Cape Farewell, respectively in the Irminger and Labrador Seas, and the collection of hydrographic and velocity data to provide context to the moored measurements. In addition to the OSNAP objectives, this project also suppors the collection of data for a complementary biogeochemistry program, GOH-SNAP (Gases in the Overturning and Horizontal circulation of the Subpolar North Atlantic Program, Lead PI Jaime Palter, URI) which has added O 2 sensors to the O-SNAP array to quantify O 2 export from the Labrador and Irminger Seas. The data will also be used to empirically model carbon concentrations, and estimate carbon export.

Understanding the acoustic variability and spatio-temporal dynamics of ocean processes impacting signal detection and ocean sound propagation at scales larger than a specific locale and longer than 1-2 years necessitates sustained observations and measurements. This program will service 5 acoustic bottom landers and conduct seafloor characterization at the 5 lander positions with an additional sixth site at the terminus of a cabled ocean observation platform. The program aims to assess patterns and trends in acoustic, oceanographic and air-sea interface dynamics through long time series analyses that will lead to transformative research related to 1) source detection/classification/ localization methods, 2) predicting habitat suitability of marine mammals through the development of Species Distribution Models, 3) understanding soundscape dynamics related to source energy densities, 4) characterizing seafloor scattering/ reflection and it relationship to bottom substrate and composition, and 5) investigating the variability of bio-physical interactions by developing echosounder-based indices for multiple types of lower trophic level organisms.

NES-LTER cross-shelf transect cruises are conducted between Martha’s Vineyard and the continental shelf break directly south. The overarching goal of the NES-LTER is to understand and predict how planktonic food webs change through space and time in response to changes in the physical environment, and how those changes impact ecosystem productivity, including of higher trophic levels. Observations and models are focused on processes and mechanisms that structure pelagic food webs, trophic transformations, and productivity, as well as the key interactions and feedbacks that modulate relationships among them. NES-LTER transect process cruises are focused on characterizing cross-shelf distributions of physical properties, nutrients, production rates, and plankton. Approximately 11 stations will be occupied in waters depths typically less than 200 m, but up to ~1600 m. Operations will include underway sampling of biological and chemical properties with science-provided instruments, CTD/rosette casts, net tows, on-deck incubations, and deployment of a towed vehicle.

The project involves the deployment and precision placement of five large independent frames containing Nuetro sensors on the seafloor using DP and the USBL. The nominal water depth is 200 meters. A single fiber optic cable (5 - 6 KM) will need to be laid on the seafloor back to the shoreside data facility in Twin Harbors, Minnesota. I may use the Blue Herron as the platform for getting the bitter end of the cable ashore in Twin Harbors.