Tag Archives: NSF

NSF Awards Support WHOI/SMAST Collaborations

wp_cold_poolThe National Science Foundation has funded a pair of studies of the coastal ocean to be conducted jointly by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and SMAST.

A $1.5 million award to a team led by PI Anthony Kirincich (WHOI) will support the first comprehensive study of current variability in the coastal ocean at scales from hundreds of meters to tens of kilometers. This unprecedented level of detail will be made possible by a combination of dense observations made by WHOI and a computer model, developed by SMAST Prof. Changsheng Chen and collaborators, which is capable of resolving very intricate oceanic and coastal features.

The model, called the Finite Volume Community Ocean Model, will also be employed in a $600 thousand study led by WHOI PI Steve Lentz analyzing the so-called “Cold Pool,” a band of cold, nutrient-rich bottom water that extends the length of the Middle Atlantic Bight (from Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras) throughout the spring and summer. Many of the migratory fish species of the region have evolved to either seek out or avoid the cold waters of this bottom feature, and growing concerns about the impact of global climate change on the ecosystem, especially fisheries, adds urgency to the investigation.

NSF Supports SMAST Tidal Energy Study

wp_turbine_close_smallerThe National Science Foundation has awarded $300K to SMAST Prof. Geoffrey Cowles and co-investigator Prof. Luigi Martinelli of Princeton University, in cooperation with Ocean Renewable Power Company, to assess the performance of tidal energy turbines, including their interactions with the immediate marine environment.

Marine kinetic energy is one of the most promising among the “green” energy candidates, but it’s not clear what the most efficient turbine design would be for real ocean conditions, nor what the environmental impact would be.

In the past, these issues have been treated as two separate problems, an approach that relies on simplifying assumptions that limit the accuracy of the results. Cowles and Martinelli propose a more realistic treatment linking two computer models that “talk” to each other: one to simulate the operation of the turbine itself, and the other to represent the dynamics of the surrounding waters and their interaction with the turbine. The collaborators will apply a novel technique that can improve efficiency by automatically changing the shape of the simulated turbine.

This project will support two Ph.D. students who will gain strong backgrounds in the disciplines of marine renewable energy and high performance computing. The project will also provide a unique opportunity for Princeton undergraduate students enrolled in a new program in sustainable energy to carry out independent work in the area of tidal energy conversion.

NSF Funds Altabet to Develop new Technology for Study of Oxygen Minimum Zones

wp_altabet_nsf_graphic-2_jun12SMAST Prof. Mark Altabet is lead PI on a new National Science Foundation $1.42 million grant ($350,000 to UMassD) to develop autonomous platforms for the study of oxygen minimum zones in the ocean. OMZs make up less than one tenth of one percent of the ocean by volume, but play a disproportionate role in the ocean’s nitrogen cycle. And as the solubility of oxygen in water decreases with increasing water temperature, a warming climate may lead to the expansion of these zones, with presently unknown consequences. Altabet and co-investigators Eric D’Asaro and Craig McNeil of the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory will employ the new instrumentation to measure a range of physical and chemical parameters in OMZs on time scales impractical for shipboard studies.