Forecasting the Ocean The 2025–2035 Decade of Ocean Science (2025) / Chapter Skim
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4 Facilities and Infrastructure for the Next Decade
4 Facilities and Infrastructure for the Next Decade
Pages 73-102
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From page 73... ...
. Expanding from that foundation, this final report evaluates scientific ocean drilling in the broader context of ocean sciences.
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a R R R Scientific ocean drilling capability R G Rb Ocean Observatories Initiative Arrays Pioneer R I Gc Cabled I NDE Rb,c,d Endurance Rd I Gc Open Ocean Rd I Gc Infrastructure Assets Non-UNOLS, non-ARF institution-owned research vessels Rd R R Marine laboratories and stations Rd R R Autonomous platforms R R and NDE Rc and NDE Geophysical Instrumentation NR NR Rb Instrumented cables Rd G Gb Ocean biotechnology NDE NDE NDE Novel sensors R and NDE R and NDE R and NDE Cyberinfrastructure R and NDE R and NDE R and NDE a Including the National Deep Submergence Facility b For geological extreme events (e.g., earthquakes) c For water column extreme events (e.g., severe storms, changes to Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation)
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. From 2013 to 2023, agency-funded research on ARF vessels averaged a total of 3,000–3,500 annual days at sea, with each agency funding ship operating costs for the days their respective funded research programs used the vessels.
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9 123 2033 1,107 Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute a Estimated by multiplying "Science Berths" by "Total Ship Days Used" b Lifetime expected to be extended by a mid-life refit. c Regional Class Research Vessels are expected to be operational no earlier than 2027.
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The estimated losses will be partly mitigated when the new NSF-owned regional-class research vessels (RCR/Vs) Taani, Narraganset Dawn, and Gilbert R Mason (Figure 4.2)
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Planning for new vessels is a long and costly process; based on recent ARF experience with the NSF-owned RCR/Vs, as well as the Navy-owned Sally Ride and Neil Armstrong, more than a full decade is required from "conception to implementation." Thus, these retirements pose an existential risk to achievement of the scientific goals outlined in this report. CONCLUSION 4.1: In the coming decade, research vessel capacity will be reduced, owing to the end of-life of multiple research vessels.
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This lack of available seagoing ocean science infrastructure may create scientific research and workforce inequities in the southeast United States, the Great Lakes region, and potentially the Pacific Islands due to a lack of NSFsupported opportunity in their respective backyards. Another aspect of the geographic distribution in vessel operations is consideration of vessel capabilities in polar waters and adjacent seas.
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Global-Class Research Vessels Global-class research vessels are more heavily used than the other classes of vessels in the ARF (Table 4.2) , meeting the critical need of research programs that require a large, interdisciplinary scientific party and/or a large platform for launching heavy equipment to study ocean processes in the global ocean.
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In the ocean sciences, at-sea research programs create such spaces and thus need to be available broadly across geographies. CONCLUSION 4.4: NSF has played an important role in ocean science workforce development by providing support for early career training onboard vessels.
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National Deep Submergence Facility The National Deep Submergence Facility (NDSF) is a federally funded center based at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the assets housed there are considered part of the ARF.
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Supporting a New Decade of Research Answering all three urgent science questions from Chapter 2 will require extensive use of the ARF (including the NDSF) for process studies and, in some cases, to obtain the necessary ocean observations by deploying moored instruments, AUVs, and ROVs.
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OCE has an important role to play in regaining U.S. lead ership in ocean sciences by providing access to the sea with research vessels.
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The OOI Facilities Board documented a large number of education and workforce development activities using OOI data in the United States and elsewhere at the high school, undergraduate, and other higher education levels. These are encouraging trends.
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Some aspects of the OOI are very much aligned with the three priorities of this reports. For instance, the recently funded Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center cable will monitor the unlocked portion of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, improving early warning and understanding of risk for extreme events; the long-term oceanographic data collected in the Irminger Sea is a critical site for understanding and forecasting changes in Atlantic meridional overturning circulation; the air–sea interaction measurements made with large open ocean buoys are relevant to the question regarding carbon and heat exchanges between the ocean and atmosphere; and coastal data provide vital context to important ecosystem and fisheries changes, from acidification to ocean heat waves to algal blooms.
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From page 87... ...
NOTES: ONC = Ocean Networks Canada; OSU-EA = Oregan State University–Endurance Array; RCA = Regional Cabled Array; UW = University of Washington. SOURCE: University of Washington.
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vessel capable of coring deeper than 50 meters into the seafloor, it is estimated that at least 90 percent of current scientific ocean drilling objectives identified in the 2025 Decadal Survey interim report will not be met (NASEM, 2024b)
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scientific ocean drilling program needs to be defined, funded, and managed so that it can (1) maximize the scientific value of legacy assets (e.g., cores, data)
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Nonetheless, because of the decom missioning of the JOIDES Resolution, there will be substantive and significant unmet drilling objec tives that are integral to addressing the three high-priority research questions identified in this report. Supporting a New Decade of Research The 2025 Decadal Survey interim report on scientific ocean drilling, Progress and Priorities in Ocean Drilling: In Search of Earth's Past and Future (NASEM, 2024b)
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. CONCLUSION 4.10: Research utilizing scientific ocean drilling plays a unique and important role in addressing the urgent science priorities: • Ocean and Climate: How will the ocean's ability to absorb heat and carbon change?
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SUPPORTING INFRASTRUCTURE Oceanographic Institutions and Local Research Vessels Oceanographic institutions support NSF-funded research in many ways, including by supplying research vessels and access to marine laboratories and stations. For example, the ARF is not the only mechanism for providing ship time, and the vessel usage described in Table 4.2 is an incomplete picture; however, the committee did not have information as to how much other NSF-funded research is conducted on board vessels that are not part of the UNOLS-coordinated ARF.
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Second, of central interest to marine labs is integrating physical and chemical models into ecosystem processes, a line of research that is highly relevant in the coastal ecosystems of bays, estuaries, marshes, and sea grasses that are nearby many marine stations. Third, long-term ecosystem and ocean stability is key to understanding extreme events, and studying these is particularly cost-effective in coastal areas.
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Both types of applications are essential to future ocean sciences research, and use of the latter will likely grow in popularity in the future. Sustained Observations Using Vehicles or Floats The Argo program provides global measurements of heat content in the upper 2,000 meters (Box 4.2)
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Their ability to support adaptive sampling plans makes them particularly useful for characterizing the environment surrounding process study locations, for all three of the priority science questions identified in this report. Another mechanism for obtaining sustained autonomous measurements, which has potential for future public–private partnerships, is the "fee-for-service" model.
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Deploying AUVs and other devices not tethered to the ship during the research expedition can help accurately determine changes in both time and space of ocean features and be particularly valuable to geographically focused process studies important to progressing the urgent science research portfolio for the next decade. These platforms are expensive and require specialized expertise to operate, which takes up valuable scientific berthing space.
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Marine seismic data also provide critical imaging for structural and stratigraphic characterization in conjunction with scientific ocean drilling. This synergy led to important advances in subduction zones geohazard research, including an improved understanding of plate coupling related to slow slip and megathrust earthquake processes, and the origin of submarine landslides.
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SMART Cables Science Monitoring and Reliable Telecommunications (SMART) cables have the potential to revolutionize ocean data collection; they provide continuous basin-scale ocean measurements in a cost-effective way by instrumenting existing telecommunication infrastructure.
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Isotopic profiles of tissues tell a great deal as to where in the food chain a species sits and whether it is feeding on shore or off shore. Development of Novel Sensors Sensors are critical for making the sustained observations needed for all three of the report's highlighted science questions.
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, biologi cal data (e.g., environmental and organismal DNA, bio-sensors for species abundance) , and measuring seafloor geodesy; • new avenues for bringing novel sensors to market at scale and broadening access to the larger research and management community; • expansion of data curation efforts to support bioinformatics, artificial intelligence, other analyses, and modeling; and the evaluation of new applications of acoustics (e.g., distributed acoustic sensing)
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From page 101... ...
At present, the field of ocean sciences has effective archives and data centers for many of the types of data collected, including at NOAA's National Oceanographic Data Center and National Centers for Environmental Information, the NSF-funded Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office, the Rolling Deck to Repository for data collected at sea, the Geodetic Facility for the Advancement of Geoscience and the Seismological Facility for the Advancement of Geoscience (GAGE/SAGE) , and many others.
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RECOMMENDATION 4.5: The National Science Foundation's Division of Ocean Sciences should fund a convening activity, such as a series of workshops, that seeks to gather expert ad vice and input, review established strategies, and develop peer-reviewed guidelines and prac tices for ocean science data curation, computing, and security, both on research vessels and on shore, integrating findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) and collective bene fit, authority to control, responsibility, ethics (CARE)
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