September 3, 2009
The University of Washington announced it will receive $126 million from the National Science Foundation to build part of an observatory that the university says will revolutionize the way oceans are studied.
This is the largest federal award the UW has received for a single project. Construction will take place over the next six years.
The UW has spent several years designing the system, which is intended to have a 25-year lifespan.
The project is part of the Oceans Observatories Initiative, a $385 million program managed by the Consortium for Ocean Leadership in Washington, D.C. The goal is to create a network of instruments, undersea cables and moorings that span the Western Hemisphere. The network will allow scientists and the public to see activity on the ocean floor while providing researchers with real-time data on natural events in the ocean.
UW President Mark Emmert said scientists have been studying the ocean the same way for hundreds of years: they go out in the water, take a sample, and bring it back to a lab where they study and write about it. He said this new observatory “will utterly transform the way we... conduct research and understand our oceans and the systems that are within them.”
The UW is in charge of work off the coast of Oregon and Washington, called the Regional Scale Nodes Program. It will oversee construction of seven service nodes that rest on the ocean floor. The nodes will be connected by 500 miles of high-bandwidth fiber-optic cable to a shore location near Pacific City, Ore.
The nodes will essentially be electrical outlets and Internet connections in the ocean that scientists can plug into for research projects. Instruments, moorings and robots will draw power from the nodes, transmit data to shore and receive instructions from operators on shore almost instantly.
John Delaney, UW professor of oceanography and director of the Regional Scale Nodes Program, has been working on creation of the system for 20 years. In the early 1980s, he said he would visit the ocean floor on submarine dives but when his team returned a year or two later, everything would be changed. He has been working ever since to create a system that would provide real-time data to help explain the changes.
Nearly $106 million in first-year funds for the observatories is coming from the federal stimulus. The UW will receive about $35 million of that. Delaney and Emmert said stimulus money has accelerated the project, though it would eventually have been constructed without it.
The UW is in final negotiations with a contractor to construct and install the lines of cable. Emmert said there are only about four firms in the world capable of the work.
That contract, which also includes building the nodes and some shore components, will be the largest single contract, but Emmert said most of funds will be spent on subcontracts with local engineering and marine firms.
The UW will immediately hire up to 30 people, mostly engineers, who will work in the Applied Physics Laboratory and Oceanography Department to support the nodes.
The system will give scientists new ways to study global climate change, ocean acidification, fish stocks, coastlines, storms and tsunamis. It will also help them understand the effects of earthquakes and volcanic activity along the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate.
Mike Kelly, assistant director of the Regional Scale Nodes Program, said each underwater location was chosen because of its significance for the Juan de Fuca plate.
Delaney said he is excited to see what information the project provides and how it can help other places create similar systems. “I see this happening again and again.”
Regionally, the project could also become a tool for economic development. Emmert said this work may help improve robotics, software, sensing equipment, composite materials and the marine industry.
“Those things fit in very beautifully to an industry that doesn't exist right now,” he said. “This is the first thing of its kind.”
The system is also designed to grow over time. Kelly said the nodes can “daisy chain” over time as additional capacity is needed.
Two local firms have worked on the project so far: Fugro Seafloor Services helped do a desktop survey of potential cable routes, and Ecology and Environment Inc. helped develop a list of permits.
Other funds will be distributed over five years to organizations involved with the project such as Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Oregon State University and the University of California, San Diego.
For more information, visit http://uwnews.org/uwnhome.asp or www.oceanleadership.org.
Katie Zemtseff can be
reached by email or by phone
at (206) 622-8272.
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