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Hearing on The Status of Oceanographic Monitoring
and Assessment Efforts on Global and Local Scales
Testimony of
Dr. Rita Colwell, Director Designate
National Science Foundation
Before the Subcommittee on Fisheries Conservation,
Wildlife and Oceans
July 30, 1998
Chairman Saxton and members of the committee, I appreciate
the opportunity to testify today on the important
topic of ocean monitoring and assessment. This is
my first hearing as Director of the National Science
Foundation, and I look forward to many more opportunities
to keep Congress apprised of the important research
and educational activities that we support.
I am pleased to report to you that the National Science
Foundation plays a substantial and critical role in
the design and development of the Nation's oceanographic
monitoring and assessment capabilities. We can identify
a number of areas within which significant progress
has been made in recent years, and in the few minutes
available I will summarize for you some important
successes.
The contribution that NSF-supported researchers make
to ocean monitoring is fundamental. Effective and
efficient oceanographic observation systems cannot
be designed without knowledge of the active processes
that they are intended to monitor. One exciting theme
emerging from the past decade of ocean sciences research
is the degree of complexity and variability of the
oceans physical, chemical and biological processes,
frequently on spatial scales of as little as half
a mile. It is clearly impossible to monitor anything
other than the surface of the global ocean (or even
coastal waters) with such minute spatial resolution.
Therefore, it is essential to understand the underlying
processes sufficiently well so a small number of key
observations can be identified that reliably tell
us how the system changes over time. Only with an
understanding of the process can we make good decisions
about what measurements will best characterize changes
in the ocean, and, most importantly, how many measurements
are required, and where they should be located.
The NSF-funded Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere (TOGA)
program focused on the physical processes occurring
in the tropical ocean and atmosphere. The result was
a recognition of the forces underlying the El Niño
phenomenon, which in turn led to the design and deployment
of the existing El Niño-Southern Oscillation
(ENSO) observing system. The classic example is the
array of buoys maintained by NOAA in the equatorial
Pacific. This array is proving to be a powerful predictor
of El Niño events. A small number of buoys,
only 70 in total, in conjunction with satellite remote
sensing methods is sufficient to monitor a vast area
of the tropical Pacific Ocean. This capability was
made possible by the basic research carried out by
NSF-supported investigators cooperating with NOAA,
NASA and international scientists in the early 1980's
on the Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere (TOGA) program
In addition to the complexity and variability of the
oceans, a monitoring strategy must recognize the intimate
links that exist between the chemical, physical and
biological changes that we are witnessing. Today we
know that it is impossible to understand the dramatic
fluctuations in fish populations on the Georges Bank,
for example, without understanding subsurface current
systems that control dispersal of fish larvae. We
cannot understand the development and distribution
of plankton in the ocean (a primary food source) without
understanding the chemistry of the ocean. The "blooms"
of plankton in the ocean depend on availability of
nutrients, including micronutrients such as inorganic
elements and vitamins.
Clearly, monitoring the ocean must be a multidisciplinary
activity because of the interconnected physical, chemical
and biological processes that control the health of
the oceans. Support of those activities require inter-agency
cooperation and partnerships.
One helpful way of categorizing the measurements that
need to be made to monitor the oceans is to consider
the following three overlapping classes:
- First, we need sustained time-series monitoring
that provides data useful perhaps decades from
now to detect subtle changes in the chemical,
biological and physical characteristics of our
oceans. These measurements provide the early-warning
of changes in our earth system.
- Second, we need selected long-term observations
that allow us to predict changes in our oceans
and weather systems and thereby alleviate negative
impacts -- unquestionably this year's El Niño
activity is a clear example of this. The real
time experiments and the predictive capacity they
provided gave us some extraordinary new insights
on climate and health.
- Lastly we need measurements, observations and
experiments to help us understand the dynamic
processes -- physical, chemical and biological
-- that are responsible for the changes, that
are the root cause of all the changes that occur
-- the understanding of which is essential to
any capability for skilled prediction. It is the
interactions of these processes that provide the
elegant complexity that sustains both human and
environmental health.
There is an intriguing shift that is slowly occurring
in the emphasis of oceanographic research. Two decades
ago the most exciting and unexpected discoveries occurred
because researchers traveled to new locations in the
oceans -- this is the traditional mode of 'exploring'.
However, today many of the biggest surprises are coming
from measurements made at the same location but over
long periods of time. It is the dynamics of the earth
that is opening up many of the most intriguing secrets.
Today oceanographers are becoming more explorers in
time, as well as explorers in space, an important
phenomenon of the science in this area of study.
It is in the process-oriented category of monitoring
and observation that NSF is vitally active, and I
am pleased to report that we are involved in a remarkably
diverse and exciting set of projects. I have sufficient
time here to describe only a few representative examples.
- The ocean moderates how rapidly the carbon dioxide
content of the atmosphere is increasing. We are
just finishing the fourth regional experiment
of the Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS) to
trace the organic and inorganic pathways of carbon
through the ocean. The goal is to learn how carbon
dioxide cycles through the Earth system. The Southern
Ocean experiment followed those in the North Atlantic,
the Equatorial Pacific and Arabian Sea. The processes
of these unique regions will be combined into
a global model that will allow us to better predict,
for example, future climate change.
- This past winter, a team of researchers has lived
on an icebreaker that is frozen into the pack
ice in the Arctic Ocean, drifting with the ice
floes as a floating science station. The project
is part of a set of activities, taking place under
the US Global Change Research program, known as
SHEBA (Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean),
which pulls together data and information on how
the sun, clouds, air, ice, and ocean interact
and affect the annual melting and refreezing of
the Arctic ice cap. This has long been a major
uncertainty in climate models, and the SHEBA project
has already helped to improve our understanding
of climate change.
- Although the unique biological communities associated
with ocean floor hydrothermal sites have been
known for more than two decades, new organisms
are still being discovered and the evolution-with-time
of these sites is being explored -- they are severely
affected by volcanic eruptions on the ocean floor
but re-establish themselves with remarkable rapidity.
NSF-funded repeat visits by both manned submersibles
and remotely operated vehicles to ocean depths
of 12,000 feet and more are providing these remarkable
observations.
- We recognize the need for long term continuous
observations on the ocean floor (not just repeat
visits once every few months), and it is indeed
a challenge to devise approaches to this that
are reliable, flexible and affordable. We are
heavily involved in three particularly exciting
pilot projects: two that use fiber optic cables
(a volcano observatory off the island of Hawaii,
and a coastal monitoring site off New Jersey)
and a third located in mid-Pacific between Hawaii
and California that will use an abandoned ocean
floor telephone cable thousands of miles long
to provide real-time access to an earthquake monitoring
station and other sensors.
This scientific research can help us learn how to
monitor changes on the ocean floor, and satellite
remote sensing is a uniquely powerful approach to
global observations of the sea surface. But how can
we keep track of what is going on in the miles of
ocean that exists in between? This is a realm in which
we have seen some of the most remarkable innovation
over the past five years fueled primarily by the needs
of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE).
As I present this to you this morning there are approximately
500 robotic vehicles distributed over the thousands
of square miles of the north Atlantic oceans, drifting
along with the ocean currents over half a mile beneath
the surface. Approximately every two weeks each of
these small instruments rises to the surface collecting
data (temperature and salinity) as it moves to the
sea surface, and then via satellite, telemeters these
data as well as its position to investigators on shore.
After being on the surface for about a day, they sink
back down to their profiling depth of about half a
mile and then repeat the cycle month after month after
month. These robot floats, called PALACE (Profiling
Autonomous Lagrangian Circulation Explorer) floats,
are for the first time providing physical oceanographers
with a real time synoptic view of ocean dynamics.
Technological innovation is changing the way we do
oceanography --permanent seafloor observatories, new
optical and acoustic imaging methods, long-term moorings,
deep-diving manned submersibles, satellite communications,
robotic vehicles, -- all are mechanisms for discovery
that NSF supports as part of the revolution in the
way we observe our planet's oceans.
We are in a time of rich opportunity for research
in oceanography. As new observation systems are implemented
we will learn ever more about the changes that are
occurring on our planet on time scales of days, years,
decades and centuries. Hurricanes, droughts, floods,
destruction of coral reefs, coastal erosion, climate
change, El Niños, fisheries, human health --
all are phenomena that are affected by, and in some
cases, controlled by the oceans.
US investigators in our nation's universities and
oceanographic institutions are the world leaders.
We do not lack for talent, or ideas or plans. If NSF
can provide its community of researchers with adequate
resources, as requested by the President in his 1999
budget, then a spectacular future of continuing new
discovery and understanding is assured, that will
build the intellectual foundation, and provide the
knowledge of the ongoing processes, that is essential
to the design of an effective ocean monitoring system.
Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity
to share with you and the members of your committee
the exciting research being supported by NSF. I would
be pleased to respond to any questions that you might
have.
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