OOI Pioneer Array Relocation Innovations Lab (Application due 2021-01-31)

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If you have a proposed geographical area for the Pioneer Array in mind, please tell us why you recommend this location. How will the Pioneer Array advance scientific, educational, and other objectives at this location? What partnerships might this location support? (~2500 characters) Please mark NA if no location preference.

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What aspects of the Pioneer Array do you feel are most important and/or applicable to your interests? Please consider how your answer would apply regardless of the new location chosen. (~1,500 characters)

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How would you like to see research and education that leverages the Pioneer Array develop over the next 5-10 years? (~1,500 characters)

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If you have a proposed geographical area for the Pioneer Array in mind, please tell us why you recommend this location. How will the Pioneer Array advance scientific, educational, and other objectives at this location? What partnerships might this location support? (~2500 characters) Please mark NA if no location preference.

I advocate that the PIONEER Array be relocated to the southern Mid-Atlantic Bight (sMAB) off the coast of MD/VA/NC. This is an unique region that lies at the terminus of the equatorward flowing polar origined coastal water and the poleward flowing tropical water from the Gulf Stream. Because of this unique oceanographic setting, it is also one of the regions undergoing the fastest climate change both in terms of the physical system as well as the ecosystem. The sMAB has additional attributes that makes it quite different from the current PIONEER Array off the New England shelf. (1) Several large river estuaries discharge into the Mid-Atlantic Bight including the Hudson River, the Delaware River, and the Chesapeake Bay Estuary. Freshwater from these estuaries mixes with the shelf water and exit the shelf just north of Cape Hatteras. This is a major shelf-basin exchange pathway in the MAB that is still poorly studied. (2) Being in much closer proximity with the Gulf Stream than New England shelf, the shelf and shelfbreak are more frequently impacted by Gulf Stream variability in terms of its strength and location. This result in a closer coupling of shelf circulation and dynamics with the Gulf Stream. At the same time, the sMAB shelfbreak is not situated immediately next to the Gulf Stream, allowing for the OOI mooring to be deployed in a moderate current region. (3) Submarine Canyons in the MAB are starting to be shown to play a major role in facilitating shelf-slope exchange and balancing the shelf salinity budget. However, observations of their direct impact (i.e. canyon upwelling plume and down canyon dense water cascade) are very rare. The PIONEER array offers an opportunity to observationally capture the impact of submarine canyons in the southern MAB.

There are numerous marine science research institutions in the sMAB domain with significant assets and infrastructure that can help to support and maintain the PIONEER Array in this region, including the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Old Dominion University, University of Delaware, University of Maryland, and Duke University Marine Lab. Vessels including the 93 ft R/V Virginia (VIMS), the 150 ft R/V Hugh Sharp (U. of Delaware), as well as the high speed 81 ft R/V Rachel Carson (U. of Maryland) plus a fleet of smaller coastal vessels can all serve as service vessels for the mooring array and the glider/AUV fleet.

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What aspects of the Pioneer Array do you feel are most important and/or applicable to your interests? Please consider how your answer would apply regardless of the new location chosen. (~1,500 characters)

My research domain include continental shelf, shelfbreak, slope, and submarine canyons. I research focuses on circulation, mixing, transport, and dynamics, from the microscale to the mesoscale. I also study larger scale circulation and climate change concerning the impact of Arctic on lower latitudes. Therefore the Coastal Pioneer Array is highly relevant to my research interests. The Pioneer Array is ideally suited for capturing and studying processes that are episodic but highly impactful in nature (e.g. storms, warm core rings, freshwater export events, boundary current meandering). In particular, my group's most recent research in submarine canyons off the U.S. East Coast show that large but highly episodic upwelling events can drive to cross shelf-slope salt fluxes comparable to the combined freshwater discharge from the major MAB estuaries.

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How would you like to see research and education that leverages the Pioneer Array develop over the next 5-10 years? (~1,500 characters)

For a significant portion of the Coastal Pioneer Array's current deployment, data access, data quality control, and data coverage have been major issues. That of course is part of the growing pain for a new major ocean observing system. At the same time, I think it is very important that for the next 5-10 years, the data from the array become more easily accessible and intuitive to enable broader participation and innovation leveraging the Pioneer Array's data. The new OOI Data Explorerer website (https://dataexplorer.oceanobservatories.org/#) is a great advancement in that direction. In addition, for scientists and students how are interested in using cloud computing resources such as Google Colaboratory to analyze and visualize the the Pioneer Array dataset, there should be easy to follow guide on how to do that. Also for modelers who are interested in assimilating Pioneer Array data, there should be easy to follow guides. I know all these things are possible currently but they require significant investment in time to figure out how. It would be great to build on each others work instead of reinventing our own wheels.

Similarly, I'd like to see access to command and control, and decision making of Pioneer Array's mobile asset be democratized. For example, glider piloting should be a realtime transparent process for scientistis and students to follow along. I believe at least some of the mobile assets should be dedicated to feature adaptive sampling on a consistent basis.

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How might your expertise and interests contribute to realizing the goal of this lab?

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What is your experience in a collaborative group environment? What approaches have you found successful to encouraging teamwork?

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This Innovations Lab is especially suited to individuals who enjoy stepping outside their areas of expertise or interest, are positively driven, enjoy creative activity, and can think innovatively. It is an intensive setting requiring you to develop novel approaches with individuals you may not know. How do you consider yourself suited to this process?

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How might your expertise and interests contribute to realizing the goal of this lab?

Ultimately I want to see the Pioneer Array be used by the oceanographic community in the broadest and most sucessful way possible. I have conducted and participated in a number of oceanographic investigations using gliders, moorings, and ships. I'm reasonably well-versed in computing technologies used for oceanographic data analysis. I have also worked with scientists from other oceanographic fields such as modeling, biological, and chemical oceanography. Although my scientific perspective is driven by my curiosity, it is very much rooted in pragmatism toward problem solving. I think my oceanographic research interests align well with the science objectives of the Pioneer Array, I look forward to collaborating with my fellow scientists to help make the most informed decision regarding the OOI Pioneer Array relocation, help to set it up for continued and growing success.

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What is your experience in a collaborative group environment? What approaches have you found successful to encouraging teamwork?

I enjoy online collaborative working. I am a big proponent of adapting the principals and methods of "Extreme Programming", specifically, pair-programming/writing, continuous review, test-driven development/scenario testing. I also subscribe to the idea that we need to tackle the hardest issues first and test proposals vigorously and honestly in a rapid feedback loop. The more intense the collaboration and information exchange, the more real work we can get done. We need to be talking to each other, writing, designing, getting critiqued, getting feedback continuously. This will make the time and energy investment worth while.

I also use collaborative messaging/discussion platforms like Slack and GitHub for communication and discussion. Threaded and asynchronous conversations are critical, and the key to task progress is to have focus the attention of participants on well-scoped topics.

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This Innovations Lab is especially suited to individuals who enjoy stepping outside their areas of expertise or interest, are positively driven, enjoy creative activity, and can think innovatively. It is an intensive setting requiring you to develop novel approaches with individuals you may not know. How do you consider yourself suited to this process?

Being a physical oceanographer at an institution with a small number of PO faculty, it requires me to communicate and collaborate with colleagues from other disciplines, departments, and institutions on a regular basis. While I love discussions about physical oceanography, I also enjoy interdisciplinary collaboration in research and teaching. I have co-taught interdisplinary courses and co-authored papers with biological and chemical oceanographers. I have written and led interdisciplinary research proposals with scientists from every discipline of marine science. I am heavily engaged in science communication and have promoted oceanographic research in a wide range of media forums. I am a proponent of open, collaborative research. Due to my broad professional network, I am exposed to not just the academic environment, I'm also attuned to industry, non-profit, and governments. I am not afraid of offering untested or not necessarily popuplar solutions or opinions, but I'm also respectful of the community consensus. Being at an early post-tenure stage of my career, it's also an ideal time for me to provide a deeper service to the oceanographic community. Overall, I think I'm pretty well-suited for this Innovation Lab. I also know that I will learn a lot from this process as well.