Discipline: Ecology Environmental and Earth Sciences
Subcategory: Geosciences and Earth Sciences
Session: 3
Nathaniel Campbell, II - Savannah State University
Co-Author(s): Sena Tay, Savannah State University, Savannah, GA; Amanda Kaltenberg Ph. D., Savannah State University, Savannah, GA
Two acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs) were attached to a bio-physical mooring deployed off the coast of Cape Hatteras, NC (35 20°N, 74 51°W) from March 2016 to May 2017 to measure current velocity variability throughout the 900+ m water column within the Gulf Stream. Comparisons of in-situ current velocity measurements at various depths were made to test the hypothesis that the various parts of the water column respond to variability over various time scales. Results support the hypothesis that there is an inverse relationship between surface velocities and deep-water velocities during warming events, and that there is a decreased relationship during cooling events, likely due to the meandering of the Gulf Stream from inshore to offshore. Ongoing work is being conducted to quantify these relationships and determine the likelihood of their impacts on the distribution of biological scattering layers of the Cape Hatteras ecosystem. This project was made funded by NSF HBCU UP (Award #1600969).
Funder Acknowledgement(s): NSF HBCU UP (Award #1600969)
Faculty Advisor: Amanda Kaltenberg, Ph. D., kaltenberga@savannahstate.edu
Role: The data were collected from a project that my mentor, Dr. Amanda Kaltneberg, started in 2016. I processed all data from the files, processed in MATLAB, came up with a hypothesis, tested the hypothesis, and drew conclusions.