Call for Abstracts
Session C 22: AUVs, ROVs, and Other Unmanned Technologies: Exploring the
Polar Extreme Environment
American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2006 Fall Meeting
11-15 December 2006
San Francisco, California
Abstract Submission Deadlines:
Friday, 1 September 2006 (mail)
Thursday, 7 September 2006 (online)
For further information, please go to:
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm06/?content=search&show=detail&sessid=144
You are invited to submit an abstract to the following special session
at this year's American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting:
Session C 22: AUVs, ROVs, and Other Unmanned Technologies: Exploring the
Polar Extreme Environment
Session Description:
Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) and Remotely Operated Vehicles
(ROVs) offer unique ways of accessing polar marine environments. The
recently completed set of cruises associated with Autosub-Under-Ice has
provided some new looks at sea ice thickness, bottom morphology of sea
ice and ice shelves, and oceanographic measurements under arctic sea ice
and the Antarctic Fimbul Ice Shelf that were not obtainable by other
technologies. Other AUVs have also successfully operated in the Arctic
and Antarctic and have made turbulence measurements, biomass
measurements of krill, currents, and light levels in the oceans under
sea ice. New ROVs are being used to access benthic environments through
holes in sea ice or ice shelves to examine benthic biology and
geophysical processes at grounding lines. Instrumentation is also being
updated with the use of multibeam sonar technology to examine the bottom
of sea ice and ice shelves in two dimensions, water samplers that can
operate from AUVs and digital cameras with light systems that work well
in the low light environments under ice covers.
Session topics include the technological developments necessary to
navigate and record data from multiple sensors on AUVs, as well as the
new findings in oceanography, glaciology, sea ice science, and biology
available from the use of AUVs and ROVs in polar environments. This
session, at the advent of International Polar Year, will review the
state of this technology and the advances to date in polar science, with
further applications during IPY and beyond in mind. Such applications
include accessing extensive areas under ice shelves and sea ice with
AUVs and subglacial lakes and ice shelf grounding lines with ROVs.
Papers describing these applications are also solicited.
Conveners:
Stephen F. Ackley
University of Texas at San Antonio
E-mail: sackley [at] pol.net
Ken Collins
National Oceanography Center, Southampton
E-mail: kjc [at] noc.soton.ac.uk