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Coastal Ocean Observing: Real-Time Data Available To Students

FerryMon Connects Students to Water Quality

Coastal Ocean Observing: Real-Time Data Available To Students
By Ann Green

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When earth science students at Wakefield High School want to track rainfall on the Cape Fear River, they go online to www.cormp.org.

Through the Coastal Ocean Research and Monitoring Program (CORMP), students also determine the wind speed, air temperature and air pressure at various locations in the Atlantic Ocean around Wilmington.

Based at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, CORMP provides oceanographic data in near-real time and information on weather conditions, as well as living marine resources. Data from buoys also provide  valuable tools for the National Weather Service in making rip current forecasts.

“My students have used the CORMP Web site when doing units on a variety of weather phenomena and in studying physical oceanography and watershed ecology,” explains Kirsten Oshinsky, science teacher at Wakefield High School in Wake County. “Kids like it because it makes weather more real.”

And in fall 2008, CORMP data will become part of a teaching component for at-risk students.

“We are starting a new academy at Wakefield High School,” Oshinsky says. “We will take students at-risk and integrate CORMP data into science, math and technology.”

 CORMP — which provides marine forecasts for fishers, boaters and others — has resources for different grade levels.

“We reach across different disciplines and aren’t just science-based,” says Jennifer Dorton, CORMP outreach and education specialist.

For a business class, students can design a company’s marketing campaign based on an environmental theme. For an English lesson, they can write a short poem about a natural feature of the Earth. And for a chemistry class, students can record data and the changing parameters of a fish tank over several weeks.

CORMP is just one of several regional and national coastal ocean observing systems that students are using across the state with data available from buoys and meteorological instruments, autonomous underwater vehicles and cabled seafloor observatories.

The online products bring cutting-edge research and technology into the classroom.

“Instead of textbooks, students are using real-time data to learn about different concepts,” says Chris Petrone, marine education specialist with Virginia Sea Grant and data and outreach coordinator for the Bridge Sea Grant Ocean Sciences Education Center.

For example, when learning about heat capacity, students can see the difference between air and water temperature, Petrone adds. “Air temperature can fluctuate drastically over 24 hours, but water temperature typically does not change much at all.”

Integrated Network

In 2004, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy completed a report that recommended students learn real-time information about ocean conditions.

President George Bush responded with the U.S. Ocean Action Plan and subsequent legislation that set up the Integrated Ocean Observing System, known as IOOS, primarily funded through the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration. The system includes a network of buoys, ships, satellites, underwater vehicles and other platforms that supply data and information for ocean predictions in U.S. waters.

The network includes CORMP and the Southeast Atlantic Coastal Ocean Observing System (SEACOOS), which knits together small monitoring programs already operating along the coast. SEACOOS is a collaborative effort among the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina Sea Grant, the University of North Carolina system and numerous other partners in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

Formed in 2002, SEACOOS tracks data through observation systems. To reach out to educators, SEACOOS developed a number of online resources, including a series of virtual classrooms and a “Fish Match” game.

“Using real-world examples from math or physics brings science to life and helps attract and nurture the next generation of ocean scientists,” says Jack Thigpen, North Carolina Sea Grant extension director who served on the SEACOOS team.

The program also produced posters on waves and hurricanes for teachers to use in their classrooms.

“Through the Center for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence SouthEast (COSEE-SE) and other partners, SEACOOS has distributed thousands of posters to teachers across the country,” says Harvey Seim, SEACOOS project coordinator and physical oceanographer at UNC-CH. “As a result, the education component of the SEACOOS Web site now receives thousands of hits per day.”

Educators also access storm modeling through another system. A partnership among the University of South Carolina, North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, the Carolinas Coastal Ocean Observing and Prediction System (Caro-COOPS) provides storm-surge modeling based on real-time monitoring of hydrologic and meteorological conditions.

“We have provided hundreds of scenarios for flooding in North and South Carolina — Hilton Head to Wrightsville Beach,” says Len Pietrafesa, a Caro-COOPS principal investigator and associate dean for external affairs for North Carolina State University’s College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. The network also has provided mathematical modeling for storms in the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds.

Caro-COOPS provides predictions while a storm is occurring. While Hurricane Katrina was moving toward the Gulf Coast in 2005, the network made forecasts.

“We predicted where the flooding would be, but didn’t include levees breaking in New Orleans,” Pietrafesa explains. The information was available to local emergency managers.

Training Teachers

North Carolina educators can enroll in a number of oceanography training programs.

Through the American Meteorological Society’s (AMS) Maury Project, facilitators are bringing new lessons on a variety of ocean topics to teachers in K-12, as well as to aquarium and museum educators. The initiative also promotes minority participation in science.

North Carolina Sea Grant marine education specialist, Terri Kirby Hathaway, conducts peer training throughout the state.

“Each of the eight Maury Project lessons focuses on a single oceanographic topic, such as ocean tides, wind-driven surface currents and shallow-water waves,” Hathaway says. “This format allows educators to learn one subject in depth so then they can interpret real-time data from ocean observing systems.”

Hathaway also teaches an AMS DataStreme Atmosphere graduate course to teachers. In the 13-week course, participants focus on the atmospheric marine environment through the use of online weather data and learning materials, along with study guide readings and investigations.

Classroom teachers of any grade level can apply as well as informal educators who have an interest in promoting the teaching of weather and ocean literacy across the curriculum. Participants receive three semester hours of graduate credit free of charge.

After taking the course, a teacher can serve as the school’s weather education resource person.

“With the national push towards an ocean literate citizenry, having educators well-versed in the ocean sciences is critical,” Hathaway says. “We need to get students excited about the ocean, and a teacher’s enthusiasm is usually transferred to their students.”

Because of advances in technology and the increased use of Web cams, there will be more opportunities for students to engage in weather projects.

“Having real-time data available for teachers to use in their classrooms makes studying the ocean more relevant to students and modernizes the way ocean sciences are taught,” Hathaway adds.

As an eighth-grade science teacher, Karen Davis seeks to link water quality to real-world applications. Last spring, Davis logged onto “Estuary Live 2007” to view a virtual trip aboard FerryMon, the Ferry-based Monitoring of Surface Water Quality on the N.C. Department of Transportation (NCDOT) ferry system. The program keeps watch on water quality in the Pamlico Sound and its tributaries.

This spring, Davis will take her eighth-grade students at Beaufort Middle School aboard one of three North Carolina ferries that collect water quality data.

“FerryMon is a direct link to real-world applications in the study of water quality on the coast,” Davis says. “Students can go online, see data recorded and make comparisons between historic data and their own observations. They also can see how governmental agencies and university scientists are using technology to help one another.”

Since 2001, teachers have accessed online data about temperature, salinity, chlorophyll — the water’s algae content — and other parameters in the Pamlico Sound. They also can download a poster, brochure and worksheet on the topic. In addition, students can track water quality conditions.

“FerryMon teaches students how to use data to make plots, graphs and examine trends in water quality for scientific purposes,” says North Carolina Sea Grant researcher Hans Paerl. “It also helps them understand how the Pamlico Sound and the Neuse River are impacted by human activities and climatic changes.”
Paerl, a professor of marine and environmental sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Institute of Marine Sciences, is FerryMon co-director, along with Joseph S. Ramus, a professor of botany and oceanography at Duke University Marine Laboratory.

Onboard Collection

Three NCDOT ferries are collecting data: the M/V Carteret that runs between Cedar Island and Ocracoke Inlet; the M/V Silver Lake that goes between from Ocracoke and Swan Quarter; and the M/V Floyd Lupton that runs between Minnesott Beach and Cherry Branch.

The instrumentation sits in a small tank inside each ferry’s protected sea chest below deck. Some water needed to cool the ships’ air conditioning machinery is first diverted to devices that record temperature, salinity, pH, dissolved oxygen and chlorophyll. Every minute, turbidity or water clarity and geographic position also are recorded.

The information is sent from the ferry to the Duke and UNC labs via cell phone or the Internet and converted to graphics. Then the data are shared online with the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ Division of Water Quality, the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, other agencies, researchers, schools, and the general public. Another device collects water samples that are tested for nutrients, algal pigments, harmful bacteria, dissolved organic matter and suspended solids that can decrease the clarity of the water.

“The frequency of data collection ensures that we have all-important information on where and when samples were gathered and tested,” Ramus says. “We’re also able to study daily, seasonally and yearly variations, cycles and trends and compare those with the effects of weather on algal abundances and excessive growth or ‘blooms’ that can be harmful to the environment. All data is being archived in digital form for further analysis.”

FerryMon started with support from North Carolina Sea Grant and the N.C. Hurricane Floyd Relief Fund to document the effects of the hurricane’s floodwaters on the Pamlico Sound. Today, the project is funded in large part by the N.C. General Assembly, at a cost of about $300,000 per year.

Paerl describes FerryMon as the state’s only water quality monitoring program for the Pamlico Sound, the second largest estuary in the U.S. and one of the nation’s most important fish nurseries. From an economic perspective, the sound is North Carolina’s most important fisheries resource, he adds.

Although North Carolina was one of the first to use oceanographic instruments on ferries in the United States, the idea dates back more than a decade in the Baltic Sea. Equipment was placed on ferries running between Helsinki, Finland, and Travemunde, Germany, a route covering some 400 miles.

“I saw how the ferries operated in Finland and came back fired up,” Paerl says. “I told Joe Ramus that we needed to put in a similar system in North Carolina.”

North Carolina’s ferry-based monitoring system has become a model for other coastal states. Marine scientists in Florida, Massachusetts, Maine, New York, California’s San Francisco Bay and Washington’s Puget Sound have begun designing comparable systems.

“FerryMon provides regular data that can be used from year-to-year and for long-term comparisons to assess trends in water quality,” says Barbara Doll, North Carolina Sea Grant water quality specialist. “It also makes wise use of resources because the ferry is already making the trip on a set schedule. So the expense of having a boat or device on which to mount sampling equipment is already covered.”

This spring, the monitoring system will expand to include data on carbon influx. Through a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Chemical Oceanographic Program, FerryMon staff will analyze carbon dioxide, an important greenhouse gas. “We will be looking at how the Pamlico Sound acts as a sink and source of this climate-altering gas,” Paerl says.

Ecosystem Monitoring

FerryMon is keeping pulse on the health of the Pamlico Sound, a critically important habitat for a variety of commercial and sportfishing species.

The monitoring system now forms the basis for evaluating and modeling how this ecosystem responds to human and natural impacts, Ramus says.

Remote sensing allows students, researchers and water quality managers an opportunity to take FerryMon’s measurements and scale them up to the entire sound by using mathematical formulas.

The DESTINY Traveling Science Learning Program has highlighted FerryMon data to hundreds of teachers since 2006. Based at the UNC-CH Morehead Planetarium and Science Center, DESTINY stands for “Delivering Edge-cutting Science Technology and Internet across North Carolina for Years to Come.” Its educators travel — from the mountains to the coast — with science labs to present “The State We’re In” workshops for teachers and teachers in-training to focus on environmental toxins.

“FerryMon is valuable because it presents real-life investigations into water quality,” says Amber Vogel of DESTINY.

The FerryMon information also has helped to keep state policymakers and scientists informed about changes in the Pamlico Sound after major hurricanes.

The project’s instruments collected water quality data for all but 36 hours during the passage of Hurricane Isabel in 2003. Paerl says that would have been nearly impossible with a small boat-based monitoring program.
“FerryMon showed us that windy but low-rainfall hurricanes like Isabel exerted much less severe and shorter duration of negative impacts on water quality than high rainfall hurricanes like Floyd,” he explains. “During Floyd, floodwaters caused multiple algal blooms and led to stressful conditions for fish and low oxygen conditions throughout the sound system for more than a year.”

One of the most recent storm collections was after Tropical Storm Ernesto in 2006. FerryMon instruments began reporting high amounts of chlorophyll in the Neuse River, resulting from increased nutrients flowing down the river in the storm’s rainwater runoff.

FerryMon, along with the Neuse River Estuary Modeling and Monitoring Project (ModMon), showed when, where and how this nutrient “pulse” led to a mid-estuary bloom of the toxic dinoflagellate Karlodinium that was closely linked to fish kills reported after the storm in the same area, Paerl explains.

“The intensive monitoring capabilities of these program have enabled water quality managers and agencies to more clearly pinpoint and link such blooms to specific fish kills and improve assessments of the overall health of the estuary,” he adds.

In Davis’ classroom, students link the data to remote sensing images. “The students can convert colors to numbers and find out about chlorophyll levels and turbidity in the sound,” she adds.

The storm data also provides a big picture, Paerl explains.

“Youngsters can use this as a way of understanding how the Pamlico system works and how it responds to the effects of storms or human impacts such as waste water spills.”