Research Projects
The influence of different nutrient delivery modes on functional biodiversity of marine plankton in a changing ocean
Starting in October of 2023, this NSF-funded project includes UNC PIs Adrian Marchetti and Harvey Seim, with collaborators Monique Messie at the Monterrey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) and Diego Figueroa at University of Texas Rio Grande (UTRG), who will use ship-based field sampling, a mooring, and numerical modeling to examine how variations in nutrient delivery impact marine plankton in the Galapagos archipelago.
Surface Water/Ocean Topography (SWOT) Adopt-a-Crossover project.
Starting in January 2023, UNC with collaborators from WHOI and ECU/CSI are deploying CPIES, gliders, and an ADCP offshore of NC to provide independent measurements with which to calibrate and validate the new NASA SWOT satellite, which launched mid-December 2022. UNC and CSI are also reconfiguring 2 HFR sites to boost the offshore coverage to better overlap with the SWOT cal/val footprint off NC.
North Atlantic Dynamics – Developing and Exploiting a Long-Term Cape Hatteras Gulf Stream Time Series.
Starting in October 2021, this NSF-funded project will investigate the wide-reaching causes and consequences of Gulf Stream (GS) variability near Cape Hatteras (CH). Central to this study will be the reprocessing and analysis of 17 years of high- frequencyradar (HFR) surface current data near CH. Because GS variability there both affects and is affected by processes remote from the region, the availability of a long time series (2004 to present, and ongoing) of surface currents from this localized region offshore of Hatteras is invaluable, particularly since the region has proven difficult to model with fidelity. The proposed work has two main objectives:
1. Reprocess historical radial velocity data from the HFR array near CH and analyze these data to create a time history of GS characteristics off CH;
2. Test hypotheses about the controls on and consequences of the GS characteristics (position, path, structure and separation location) for processes ranging from event- to interannual-scales, using this time history with other long, observation-based time series in the North Atlantic.
The project is a collaboration with Magdalena Andres at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Mike Muglia at Coastal Studies Institute (part of East Carolina University) and Seim and Bane at UNC.
SECOORA high-frequency radar and glider operations
The Seim Lab has operated high-frequency radar on the Outer Banks of NC since 2003. Now done collaboratively with Mike Muglia at Coastal Studies Institute, we maintain 4 sites along the NC coast, at Duck, Buxton, Ocracoke and Core Banks. The installations are 5 MHz CODAR long range systems, capable of mapping surface currents up to 200 km offshore. Observations are relayed within hours to a national data center where they are aggregated with data from other sites to provide coverage around much of the US coastline (https://cordc.ucsd.edu/projects/mapping/). These observations are available to the public, and used to support search and rescue operations by the US Coast Guard, oil spill trajectory predictions, as well as supporting studies of ocean processes and dynamics.
The Seim Lab is also a member of the SECOORA glider observatory, a collaboration between Catherine Edwards at Skidaway Institute of Oceanography (lead), Chad Lembke at the University of South Florida, and the Seim Lab at UNC. Slocum coastal gliders are deployed roughly 4 times a year off the SE US to provide seasonal depictions of shelf conditions in the SECOORA region (NC,SC, GA and FL). Additional glider deployments in recent years during hurricane season have been made to map heat content along the shoreward edge of the Gulf Stream.
Lake Nutrient Management Studies
With Dr. Leuttich at the Institute of Marine Sciences, the Seim Lab is studying circulation and property distributions in two local lakes, Jordan and Falls, as part of the UNC Policy Collaboratory’s suite of studies designed to better define strategies for nutrient management in these reservoirs. Bottom moored doppler profilers and full water column strings of temperature and light sensors have been deployed at choke points in the lakes for 1-2 years. Dr. Luettich’s group has deployed profilers carrying multi-sensor probes in Jordan Lake for 3 years (https://jordanlakeobservatory.unc.edu).