Award Data

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to the atmosphere are primary drivers of global climate change and hence there is a crucial need to quantify their sources and sinks. A general technique to constrain source and sink strengths is the analysis of the relative proportions of isotopic variants of GHG's. These measurements must be performed with extremely high precision. The gold standard technique, i ...

The accurate identification of seafood species and origin has become an extremely important topic in the food industry. Mislabeling a lower valued seafood product to represent a species of higher value constitute economic fraud. In addition, this mislabeling compromises proper geographic origin labeling and fishery management efforts. DNA barcoding for seafood species identification provides re ...

There are currently no inexpensive observing systems that detect temperature, salinity and currents under the ocean's surface - all important factors in predicting the intensity of hurricanes. Boston Engineering proposes to develop the Multi-Purpose Above Surface/Below Surface Expendable Dropsondes (MASED). Our design builds on the highly successful air dropsondes already in use, combined with a ...

NOAA has identified a problem with the display and usability of satellite imagery on NWS websites. This proposal provides analysis of the feasibility and usability of a proposed system to address this concern. Our goal in the project is to create a heuristically sound conceptual design and tool set for display and interaction with satellite imagery on the NWS site. The project will also explore ...

The objective of the proposed work is to determine whether Dioxide Materials' miniature C02 sensors have the potential to be adapted for autonomous measurement of ocean carbon. The existing sensors have many advantages for measurements of ocean carbon. They are much smaller and less costly than the existing sensors, work with much smaller gas samples, and use much less power. The sensors were d ...

This Phase I proposal determines the feasibility of growing multiple species of macroalgae in commercial marine aquafarm environments. Marine aquaculture is a logical outgrowth of successful wild harvest seaweed businesses over the last several years. Developing a marine aquaculture prototype will foster the science of sea farming. Extending growing seasons for multi-species would provide year ...

To capture critical weather and SST data in the Tropical Cyclone Boundary Layer (TCBL), Piasecki Aircraft proposes to evaluate existing meteorological sensor packages, integrate new off-the-shelf MEMS sensors, and design an air-launched UAS to improve the resolution of observations captured in the TCBL. Capturing latent and sensible heat fluxes can be achieved reliably with a powered UAS (compare ...

The goal of this project is to develop, implement, and experimentally validate a new Differential Global Navigation Satellite System (DGNSS) capable of providing sub-centimeter positioning accuracy for quasi-static scientific, mapping, and survey applications. The main feature of the proposed DGNSS solution is that it leverages GNSS reference data from existing NOAA's Continuously Operational Ref ...

During the Phase I program, Aurora conducted a comprehensive survey of potential platforms that included government owned and furnished UAVs and manned aircraft as well as Aurora’s Centaur Optionally Piloted Aircraft (OPA). The survey concluded, in part, that UAVs offer a significant improvement in data collection capability when compared to manned aircraft that are currently fielded by NOAA. ...

Domestic US aquaculture is moving toward fishmeal replacement in aquafeeds with a variety of alternative protein sources including plant-based, terrestrial and marine proteins. In our Phase I work we showed the feasibility of modifying the protein quality of several alternate protein sources, specifically animal byproduct meals, and its potential significant impacts on marine fish production. Th ...