Special Seminar: Dr. Al Plueddemann, Relocation of the NSF Ocean Observatories Initiative Pioneer Array

Dr. Al Plueddemann, senior scientist with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and principal investigator for the Coastal and Global Scale Nodes of the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), will provide an overview of the relocation of the NSF Ocean Observatories Initiative Pioneer Array to the coastal waters offshore of the NC Outer Banks.

The OOI Pioneer Array was envisioned as a re-locatable coastal array to investigate physical and biochemical exchange processes on the continental shelf and upper slope.  The array infrastructure includes moorings, gliders, and AUVs.  The Array was previously sited on the New England Shelf (NES), centered at the shelfbreak south of Martha’s Vineyard, MA.

The new MAB site represents a different environment than the New England Shelf location and offers opportunities to collect data on a variety of cross-disciplinary science topics, including cross-shelf exchange and Gulf Stream influences, land-sea interactions associated with large estuarine systems, a highly productive ecosystem with major fisheries, processes driving biogeochemical cycling and transport, and fresh-water outflows during extreme rain events.