Program Updates 12 - Ocean Observatories Initiative

Information on East Coast Activities and Pioneer Array

By ooistaff | December 4, 2011 |

The Ocean Observatories Initiative program currently is conducting At Sea Tests of equipment off the New England Coast.

Program Update – October 2011

By ooistaff | October 27, 2011 |

This month the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) program awarded two important contracts for air-sea instrument packages and wire following profiler capabilities for the Coastal Global Scale Nodes (CGSN) component of the OOI. And while equipment and instruments continue to be tested and put in place for the OOI, all those interested can learn more about the instrument locations, measurements and data that will result by visiting a new Instrument Table Section on the OOI Website.

Learn More About OOI Instruments and Access Pre-Commissioned Data

By ooistaff | October 12, 2011 |

The Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) program has created a special Instrument Table Portal for its website with the goal of providing the scientific community with up-to-date, detailed descriptions of the instrumentation found throughout the numerous components and locations of the OOI.

Program Update – April 2011

By ooistaff | April 12, 2011 |

The Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) Program has expanded the size of the program team with the addition of a new Implementing Organization (IO) and made significant progress on a number of technical test and development fronts.

Newest OOI Team Members Met to Kickoff Path Forward for Education and Public Engagement

By ooistaff | March 28, 2011 |

The newest members of the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) team, the Implementing Organization (IO) for Education and Public Engagement (EPE), visited the Consortium for Ocean Leadership on March 24-25.

An Update From the Program Director

By ooistaff | May 15, 2010 |

On March 1, 2010, we completed the first six months of the five-year construction phase of the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). We’ve been tackling all the key ‘start-up’ steps of a new program, including increasing staff levels across the program, getting several major contracts in place, introducing scientists and educators to the capabilities of the OOI, while working to complete the Year 1 construction milestones. As you will learn on this website, and through the supporting documents, the OOI will deliver data to address a multitude of important science and societal questions, including those centering around climate change, ecosystem health, ocean acidification and carbon cycling. This will be accomplished through an innovative network of sensors measuring physical, biological, chemical and geological processes from the air-sea interface to the ocean floor.

The OOI infrastructure is being built with support from the National Science Foundation, under the Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) funding stream, which includes $105.93 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). We began the first official project year in September 2009 and will continue construction through 2014. We expect some portions of the network to provide sustained data by late 2012, with full network capability by late 2014. Many additional details are available in the web pages and links below this section, and more details will follow as construction progresses.

Although the OOI Project Team is building the system, the sustained data streams and data products of the OOI will not belong to the OOI Project Team, they will belong to you, whether you are a scientist, a student, an educator, or an interested citizen. Learn how to get involved as the system takes shape over the next few years! (more…)