NOPP: Circulation, Cross-Shelf Exchange, Sea Ice, and Marine Mammal Habitats on the Alaska Beaufort Sea Shelf

• Main Authors: Weingartner, Thomas, Holt, Ben, Kwok, Ron, Pickart, Robert, Plueddemann, Al, Moore, Susan, Stafford, Kate
• Other Authors: ALASKA UNIV FAIRBANKS INST OF MARINE SCIENCE
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2007
• Subjects: Biological Oceanography; Physical and Dynamic Oceanography; *OCEAN CURRENTS; *CONTINENTAL SHELVES; *SEA ICE; *AQUATIC ANIMALS; *BEAUFORT SEA; MAMMALS; DEFORMATION; RADAR MAPPING; SATELLITE IMAGERY; ACOUSTIC RECORDING SYSTEMS; MOORING; PERIODIC VARIATIONS; HYDROGRAPHIC SURVEYING; STRATIFICATION; DISPLACEMENT; WIND; *ARCTIC SHELVES; *MARINE MAMMALS; SYNOPTIC VARIATIONS; MAPPING RADAR; Arctic; Beaufort Sea; Sea ice; Alaska
• Online Access: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA481003; http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA481003

Our long-term goal is to understand how the circulation, stratification, sea-ice dynamics, and marine mammal utilization of arctic shelves will change in response to a diminishing ice cover. We thus seek to understand better the wind-forced response of the shelf and the shelfbreak, and the cross-shelf exchange of mass, materials, and momentum. These responses will likely affect the use of arctic shelves by marine mammals. Our study is applying a variety of recently developed technologies in a synergistic manner. These include passive acoustic recorders, moored profiling temperature/salinity sensors, autonomous underwater vehicles, shore-based current mapping radars, and geophysical processing tools to determine ice displacement and deformation. An additional long-term goal is to demonstrate the applicability of these technologies and their synergistic usage to other arctic shelves. Prepared in cooperation with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA; Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Department of Physical Oceanography MS 21, Woods Hole, MA; and University of Washington, Applied Physics Lab, Seattle, WA. A National Oceanographic Partnership Program Award. The original document contains color images.