Award Data

Temperature is the critical signal that allows monitoring of a myriad of Earth’s processes. From direct measurements of wildfire and urban heat to more complex relationships with drought, agriculture, aquaculture, and biodiversity, maintaining a steady pulse on Earth’s surface temperature enables us to mitigate for and adapt to the impacts of extreme events and increasingly variable water avai ...

The brevetoxins (PbTx) produced by Karenia brevis cause harmful algal blooms (HAB) or "red tide" in seawater. Currently, the only available ways of detecting PbTx are laboratory tests such as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays, which are expensive and slow, and require complex instrumentation and multiple processing steps. In previous work Intelligent Optical Systems (IOS) demonstrated a compact l ...

Viable Gear will provide proof-of-concept for a seaweed-based bioplastic to be used in manufacturing a compostable biotwine for marine equipment, designed to replace petroleum-based plastics. This addresses NOM-SBIR research topic area 9.3, The Changing Ocean - specifically to "support increased protection and restoration of marine and coastal habitats to enhance vital ecosystems", by helping decr ...

Salient Predictions Inc. proposes to develop new technology for accurate subseasonal to seasonal (S2S) water availability forecasts so that communities may manage water resources in preparation for hazardous events like floods and droughts. Current hydrological models face challenges related to data inputs, as climate change has been presenting weather patterns atypical from historical data. Witho ...

We propose to develop in-situ low cost sensors to support fire meteorology for wildland fire emergency response, by blanketing the fire area with real time measurements. Sensors can be air-deployed to provide vertical atmospheric measurement profiles or hand-emplaced for augmenting existing surface fire weather stations. Each telemeters precision measurements of air temperature, solar radiation, i ...

The long endurance “StratoSonde” lighter-than-air, uncrewed system combines a low-cost, 5day endurance StratoSonde supports up to 10 micro-dropsondes, which when released from the HAB, descend safely through the entire atmospheric column under a ribbon drogue while reporting observations directly back to the HAB. This project will assess the feasibility of integrating a disposable miniature ae ...

Ocean ecosystems are critical to the regulation of Earth’s climate and biodiversity, while also hosting a range of direct and indirect benefits to people, from being a food source to recreation. Coastal ocean systems are dynamic regions especially rich in diverse biological and geochemical interactions. However, major gaps exist in our knowledge of the primary biogeochemical processes and the fa ...

There is a dire need for technology to rapidly and accurately detect and quantify Escherichia coli serotypes 0157:H7 and K12 and Vibrio parahaemolyticus and total fecal coliforms. In Phase I we developed a novel approach to Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) for detecting human pathogens in cultured bacteria, mixtures of organisms and in oyster tissue. Our approach uses a higher energy las ...

The marine microalgae Chrypthecodinium conhii (C. cohnii) contains high levels of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and DHA synthase enzymes (DSe). Finfish have shown de novo synthesis of DHA when fed a C. cohnii product, KoniSap™, developed by FPN LLC. KoniSap™ is unique to the aqua-feed market as it is produced under low temperature and inert gas to prevent lipid oxidation and avoid enzyme denatura ...

Demand for seaweed products has dramatically increased in the U.S.; however, domestic production from both wild harvests and aquaculture operations only supplies 1% of this demand. To meet demand, expansion of seaweed aquaculture is crucial to protect wild populations from extinction by overharvesting, which impacts entire marine ecosystems. Currently, U.S. kelp aquaculture methods rely on wild ha ...