Schmidt Ocean Institute supports open sharing of information about the ocean to stimulate the growth of its applications and user community, and amplify further exploration, discovery, and deeper understanding of our environment. Through partnerships with data management archives and repositories in the oceanographic community, Schmidt Ocean Institute enables standard-compliant sharing of scientific information and data collected during research cruises with the following data partners on behalf of R/V Falkor and the scientists on board.

Falkor Underway Data

  • Underway data collected using embedded instrument systems on R/V Falkor during research cruises and transits are made available post-cruise to the general public via Schmidt Ocean Institute’s partnership with Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R). The datatypes curated by R2R and are listed below:
  • Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler measurements (ocean currents)
  • Conductivity, Temperature, Pressure and other sensors of the water column
  • Echosounder (depth to seafloor or midwater reflections, shallow sediment profiles, water column images)
  • Expendable Probes (XBT, XCTD, XSV, XCP launched from deck
  • Fluorometer (fluorescence)
  • Gravimeter (gravity field)
  • Magnetometer (magnetic field)
  • Meteorological Data (wind speed/direction, temperature, humidity, turbulence, precipitation, radiation)
  • Multibeam (unprocessed, swath bathymetry, amplitude, backscatter, water column image)
  • Navigation Data (time, position, Global Navigation Satellite System, Vertical Reference Unit, Speed Log, Gyrocompas)
  • Partial pressure of dissolved carbon dioxide (pCO2)
  • Sea surface sound velocimeter (SSV)
  • Thermosalinograph (TSG – flow-through temperature and salinity)
  • Winch (wire tension, speed, payout)

Sensor-Based Marine Geoscience Data

  • Sensor-based marine geoscience data, such as robotic vehicle data and still images, metadata, and processed multibeam data will be made available via Schmidt Ocean Institute’s partnership with Marine Geoscience Data System (MGDS). The data types curated by MGDS can be found here, and the most common data types are listed below:
  • Backscatter – Acoustic & Optical (intensity of sound that is scattered & amount of light scattered by particles)
  • Bathymetry (seafloor depth data)
  • Fluorescence
  • Global Multi-Resolution Topography (GMRT) – continuously-updated compilation of seafloor swath
  • Hydroacoustic (waveform data collected by sound-channel moored hydrophones)
  • Navigation (position of device or vehicle)
  • Seismic (Active Subbottom, Navigation, Passive, Reflection, Velocity, WideAngle)
  • Sidescan (backscatter intensity data)
  • Turbidity (cloudiness of a fluid associated with suspended particles)
  • Turbulence (chaotic, stochastic property changes of fluid flow)
  • Velocity (Doppler, Particle, Sound)
  • Video (video taken from vehicles)
  • Visualization (Fledermaus, GoogleEarth)

Multibeam Data

Schmidt Ocean Institute collaborators with the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping (CCOM) at the University of New Hampshire on the quality assurance of the multibeam mapping system operation onboard R/V Falkor and the collected data. Our collaborators at CCOM conduct annual testing and calibration of R/V Falkor’s multibeam echosounders to ensure the high quality of the collected mulitbeam data. As may be necessary, Schmidt Ocean Institute can coordinate with CCOM to organize post-processing of the raw collected multibeam data, e.g. if it is not possible for the science party to process the data onboard Falkor during the cruise. Following any post-processing by CCOM, the processed multibeam data is sent to MGDS for curation and archiving.

Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler Data

Schmidt Ocean Institute has a partnership with University of Hawaii Data Acquisition System (UHDAS) to provide quality assurance for the data collected from R/V Falkor’s Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler. Current velocity data is continuously collected on board Falkor and a daily email is sent to UHDAS containing status updates for the system, detailing data acquisition and allowing for archiving, processing and plotting of the data. The most recent data is plotted on the UHDAS website. The ADCP data is then archived on the R2R website.

Shipboard Meteorological Data

Schmidt Ocean Institute has a partnership with Florida State University’s Shipboard Automated Meteorological and Oceanographic System (SAMOS) to provide quality assurance for the data collected with R/V Falkor’s meteorological instrumentation. All shipboard meteorological data is collected and sent to SAMOS in near real-time for quality assurance and archived in R2R post-cruise.