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SEMINAR: Oceans Institute Seminar: DR CHRIS BARNES

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Today's date is Thursday, March 28, 2024
Oceans Institute Seminar: DR CHRIS BARNES : Understanding earth/ocean processes: new opportunities and technologies through cabled ocean observatories such as NEPTUNE Canada Other events...
Abstract: The oceans, bounded by the atmosphere, lithosphere and shore, and covering 70% of the Earth's surface remain a poorly understood component of the Earth system. The changing climate, ocean circulation and chemistry, and depletion of ocean life are increasing at an alarming rate, largely a consequence of human activities. It is imperative to improve public understanding of the changes, consequences and possible future options, and to develop responsive informed public policies. A more quantified scientific database is required not achieved from a century of investigations using buoys, battery operated instruments and ship-based investigations. Advent of the first cabled ocean observatories (e.g. in Canada (NEPTUNE Canada, VENUS), US (OOI, MARS), Japan (DONET), China, Taiwan (MACHO), and European Union (EMSO)) demonstrates challenges, benefits, opportunities and added values for ocean science and commercial applications. Introducing abundant power and high bandwidth communications into diverse ocean environments allows: discrimination between short and long-term events, interactive experiments, real-time data/imagery, and complex multidisciplinary teams interrogating vast interoperable databases over decades. Cabled observatories will transform ocean sciences, with a progressive wiring of the oceans. NEPTUNE Canada completed installation of the subsea infrastructure with over 100 instruments in 2009-10, establishing the world's first regional cabled observatory (northeast Pacific; 800km backbone cable, with five nodes on the coast, continental slope, abyssal plain, and ocean-spreading ridge (100-2660m)). Principal scientific themes are: plate tectonic processes and earthquake-tsunami dynamics; seabed fluid fluxes and gas hydrates; ocean/climate dynamics and biotic effects; deep-sea ecosystem dynamics; engineering/computational research. New knowledge, scientific interpretations, and policy applications are addressing: ocean/climate change, ocean acidification, mitigating natural hazards, non-renewable and renewable natural resources. Socio-economic benefits include: resource/hazard/environmental management, sovereignty, security, transportation, data services, and public policy.

Bio: Chris Barnes is Professor Emeritus in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, and was Director of NEPTUNE Canada (2001-11), the world's first regional cabled ocean observatory network. For the previous decade, he served as Director of both the Centre for Earth and Ocean Research and the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. He has a PhD in Geology from the University of Ottawa. He served as Chair of Earth Sciences both at the University of Waterloo, Ontario (1975-81) and at Memorial University of Newfoundland (1981-87); from 1987-89, he was the Director General of the Sedimentary and Marine Branch of the Geological Survey of Canada. He has served as President of the Geological Association of Canada, the Canadian Geoscience Council, and the Academy of Science of the Royal Society of Canada; and as a commissioner of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, as a member of the International Ocean Drilling Program, and on the Science Advisory Committees of EuroSITES, two Spanish ocean observatories, and Canada's Ocean Tracking Network. Fellowship has been awarded in the Royal Society of Canada and the National Academy of Sciences, Cordoba, Argentina. In 1996, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada.
Speaker(s) Dr. Chris Barnes, Professor Emeritus in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, and former Director of NEPTUNE Canada
Location OCEANS INSTITUTE SEMINAR ROOM
Contact Dr. Julie Trotter <[email protected]> : 08 64883925
Start Fri, 26 Oct 2012 13:30
End Fri, 26 Oct 2012 14:30
Submitted by Andrew Lo <[email protected]>
Last Updated Wed, 24 Oct 2012 10:28
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