Coastal Management: Integral Contributes to Ocean Technology to Monitor Hypoxia for NOAA

The problem of hypoxia—zones of low oxygen that can impact aquatic ecosystems—is expanding globally, leading to fish kills and economic effects. Integral’s state-of-the-science research can help map and model areas of concern. 

Integral will develop a real-time data management system to handle data and metadata from the L3Harris C-Worker 5 unmanned surface vehicle, shown above.

Integral Consulting is collaborating with the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), L3Harris, and the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System (GCOOS) to advance autonomous hypoxia monitoring capabilities in the Gulf of Mexico using unmanned surface vehicles.  The technology transition project will provide a cost-effective means to map and characterize ocean environments.

USM received a $1.1 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for the project, which extends through 2023, with Integral as one of the subrecipients. Grace Chang, Ph.D., is Integral’s principal investigator for the project.  Other Integral staff participating in the project are Caleb Grant, Neil Simon, and Frank Spada. The USM principal investigator is Stephan Howden.

Integral’s role is to design, develop, and implement a real-time cloud-based data management system to handle raw data and metadata from the L3Harris C-Worker 5 unmanned surface vehicle, and transmit processed data to GCOOS. The data management system will ensure that all field-collected data are quality controlled and formatted to facilitate customization of data products for sharing with multiple end users.

Driven mainly by nutrient enrichment from land-based sources, waters that are hypoxic contain less than 2–3 ppm of dissolved oxygen—typically too low to support life. Effects of hypoxia can include direct fish kills and shifts in fish migration and reproduction, impacting ecosystems and economies.

This ocean technology development effort will greatly improve observations and increase capacity for monitoring hypoxia in a cost-effective manner. The transitioned technology will contribute to the characterization of northern Gulf of Mexico hypoxic events and offer substantial improvements in model calibration and validation.

For more information, contact Dr. Chang at gchang@integral-corp.com.