Understanding the Planetary Life Support System: Next-Generation Science in the Ocean Basins
Presented by John Delaney
University of Washington
This 2012 Ocean Science Lecture is now available as a streaming YouTube video. Click the video window below to play.
About the Lecture
The global ocean ecosystem is essential to the quality of life on the continents. The oceans are very complicated, changing rapidly and unpredictably. Sophisticated computational simulations and models of oceanic behavior require immense amounts of carefully crafted data input to become predictive. Novel approaches to working in the oceans in the coming generations have the potential to revolutionize our perceptions (and eventual management) of our entire planet.
About the Speaker
John Delaney is Professor of Oceanography and holds the Jerome M. Paros Endowed Chair at the University of Washington. Since 1997, he has directed development of the regional cabled ocean observatory in the northeast Pacific Ocean that evolved into the Regional Scale Nodes program within the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative. Delaney’s team will design, install, and operate, for 25-years, an innovative, Internet- connected, full-ocean research infrastructure based on a network of industry-standard submarine fiber-optic cables. This system will provide unprecedented power and bandwidth to allow interactive human telepresence within the oceans connected to thousands of fixed and mobile sensor-robot packages able to detect and respond to energetic, transient events like giant storms, large earthquakes, and erupting volcanoes in major portions of the ocean basin.
Dr. Delaney, who joined the University of Washington faculty in 1977, has published nearly 100 scientific publications, and has served as chief scientist on more than 45 oceanographic research cruises, many of which have included the Deep Submergence Vehicle Alvin and the Remotely Operated Vehicle Jason. Among his many honors, he is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, and he has served on several NASA Committees charged with defining the nature of missions to Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter, suspected to harbor both a liquid ocean and submarine volcanoes.
Johnson Education Center, Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University, 5600 US 1 North, Fort Pierce, FL. Telephone 772-242-2506.
