| Summary: | This project involves a marine-mammal sensor-tagging approach that will allow for sustained oceanographic observations along the periphery of the Greenland Ice Sheet. This effort is motivated by a successful pilot project involving ringed seals in two Greenland fjords this past summer. The pilot proved the viability of the technique, which makes use of ringed seals who spend the majority of their time in such fjords and who may be appropriately equipped with integrated, location-tracking, CTD, and satellite communication instrumentation. The observations, which will be collected in partnership with colleagues at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, will be archived in national data bases, on a project website, and made widely available to others in near real-time. This project will address a currently missing, critical component of the Arctic Observing Network, namely observations of ocean temperatures and salinities along the periphery of the Greenland Ice Sheet. The methodology will lead to a practical, sustainable data stream for hydrographic properties in the notoriously difficult to access regions of the Greenland inner fjords, thus further filling out the overall Arctic Observing Network data portfolio. Such observations are needed to develop improved physics that can subsequently be directly used in IPCC class, coupled climate models. The data collection will also be of immense value to researchers studying the behavior of the ringed seals in Greenland. Virtually no behavioral data exists for these seals in the ice-ocean fjords, and the project data can be used to learn about the habitat and distribution of the seals, and ultimately of their possible vulnerability to climate change.
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