The Coastal Mixing and Optics Project
PI: Prof. Tommy Dickey
ONR AASERT Fellow (1995-1999): Grace Chang
Introduction
The Coastal Mixing and Optics project was funded by the Office of Naval
Research. The experiment was designed to examine the mixing of ocean water on
a continental shelf and the effects of mixing on water column optical
properties.
The site of the CMO experiment was the "Mud Patch" of the Middle Atlantic
Bight (MAB) continental shelf, the southwestern portion of Georges Bank (GB).
The site is located about 110 km south of Martha's Vineyard, Cape Cod,
Massachusetts, U.S.A. in approximately 70 m of water. The field experiment was
conducted between July 1996 and June 1997.
Objectives
The Ocean Physics Laboratory of UCSB was concerned with physical and
particle relationships via optical properties. The overall objective of
our research was to determine how particles and optical properties respond
to physical forcing under various oceanic conditions on a broad continental
shelf off the east coast of the U.S. Some of our specific objectives of the
CMO project were to:
- Quantify the variability of optical and physical properties at time scales
as short as a few minutes
- Relate physical processes (tides, wind forced intertial currents, surface
waves, internal waves, advection, etc.) to optical variability
- Determine the relationships between vertical fluxes of particles and
optical properties with respect to the physical environmental conditions such
as shear, stratification, and gradient Richardson number
- Make general distinctions among particle types and to partition their
origins
- Relate optical and particle variability near the ocean bottom to physical
processes affecting sediment resuspension.
CMO Site Map (courtesy of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab)
CMO Mooring Diagram
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