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: 2008
• Subjects: Biology; Physical and Dynamic Oceanography; Computer Programming and Software; *HABITATS; *SOFTWARE TOOLS; *SEA ICE; PASSIVE SYSTEMS; ARCTIC REGIONS; OCEANOGRAPHY; DISPLACEMENT; MAMMALS; UNDERWATER VEHICLES; ICE FORMATION; AUTONOMOUS ACOUSTIC RECORDERS; MAPPING RADARS; PROCESSING SOFTWARE; Arctic; Beaufort Sea; Sea ice; Alaska
• Online Access: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA496581; http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA496581

Our long-term goals are to understand how the physical oceanography, 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 shelfbreak and the cross-shelf exchange of mass, materials, and momentum. These responses will likely affect the use of arctic shelves by marine mammals. We are applying several recently developed technologies to an arctic shelf in synergistic ways, including passive acoustic recorders, moored profiling CTDs, autonomous underwater vehicles, shore-based current mapping radars, and geophysical processing tools to determine ice displacement and deformation. These bear on another long-term goal which is to demonstrate the applicability of these technologies to other arctic shelves.