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    • Profiling Sensor to Map N2 Gas Production in OMZs - EX1709

    Metadata Updated: March 28, 2026

    Oxygen Minimum Zones (OMZs) play important roles in regulating the ocean's global carbon and nitrogen cycles. In these functionally anoxic waters, denitrifying and anammox microbes remove nitrogenous nutrients from the biosphere by transformation to biologically unavailable nitrogen gas (N2). For this project, scientists developed a new in situ profiling sensor to detect this 'excess' N2 in OMZ regions in order to quantify these N-loss processes. The new sensor incorporated recent but reliable and proven technical advances in membrane and pressure sensor technologies, and therefore its development was relatively low risk. Compared to existing, slow response sensors, the new sensor had low production cost and could easily be added to any ship's rosette CTD. Scientists' near-term goal was to demonstrate the sensor on two NOAA research vessels and begin to collect high-quality excess N2 data in OMZs to document baseline excess N2 inventories. Their long-term goal was to determine if excess N2 inventories in OMZs are increasing as a result of ocean deoxygenation. It was expected that the new sensor can be easily adapted for use on other profiling platforms (autonomous underwater vehicles, remotely operated vehicles, winched profilers, etc.) and be used more widely to study air-sea gas flux and net community metabolism. Funding for this project was provided by NOAA Ocean Exploration via its Ocean Exploration Fiscal Year 2016 Funding Opportunity.

    Access & Use Information

    License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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    Dates

    Metadata Date March 23, 2026
    Metadata Created Date October 19, 2024
    Metadata Updated Date March 28, 2026
    Reference Date(s) October 16, 2017 (publication)
    Frequency Of Update notPlanned

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from NCDDC OER

    Other Data Resources

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Date March 23, 2026
    Metadata Created Date October 19, 2024
    Metadata Updated Date March 28, 2026
    Reference Date(s) October 16, 2017 (publication)
    Responsible Party (Point of Contact); Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington (Principal Investigator)
    Contact Email
    Guid gov.noaa.ncei.oer:EX1709-OMZTest_Profile_COLLECTION
    Access Constraints
    Bbox East Long -78.34357
    Bbox North Lat 21.3694
    Bbox South Lat 6.74137
    Bbox West Long -157.97092
    Coupled Resource
    Frequency Of Update notPlanned
    Harvest Object Id 75ec974a-315c-4f8f-a417-e3b705e66b66
    Harvest Source Id 0eb61eac-016f-4f95-a6c3-2974339749bb
    Harvest Source Title NCDDC OER
    Licence Access Constraints: No access constraints Use Constraints: No use constraints.
    Lineage Processing Steps
    Metadata Language eng; USA
    Metadata Type geospatial
    Old Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": [[[-157.97092, 6.74137], [-78.34357, 6.74137], [-78.34357, 21.3694], [-157.97092, 21.3694], [-157.97092, 6.74137]]]}
    Progress
    Spatial Data Service Type
    Spatial Reference System
    Spatial Harvester True
    Temporal Extent Begin 2017-10-16
    Temporal Extent End 2017-11-11

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