Equipment: MRI: Track 1 An interdisciplinary approach to high-resolution sea and lake-floor mapping through acquisition of an R2Sonic 2024 multibeam sonar

This award is made to Occidental College to purchase an ultra-high-resolution multibeam sonar to collect bathymetric data, including multispectral acoustic backscatter, in oceans and lakes up to 500m in depth. This system will support ongoing faculty and undergraduate research projects and develop upper-division course curriculum at Occidental College, a primarily undergraduate-serving institution.

Faculty and student research that will be enabled by this award will address a wide range of environmental science research questions around the globe. For example, the multibeam sonar will be used to map earthquake-generated slope-failure deposits in lakes in the Teton Range in Wyoming, determine the biotic benthic composition of coral reefs in Jamaica, and assess the success of a newly-constructed restoration reef in southern California.

Under the mentorship of Biology and Geology faculty, Occidental undergraduate students will gain valuable experience working with this multibeam sonar system, managing and manipulating large data sets, and associated modeling, which are key to their success in post-graduate careers in STEM fields.

A major goal of this project is to determine a clear plan to acquire, maintain, and deposit data into an appropriate disciplinary archive to ensure that best practices for long-term data stewardship and integration are met. This includes making high-resolution, high quality bathymetric data and metadata freely available to the public. Data products will be made publicly accessible through submission to internationally-recognized data repositories to serve a broad research community.

These data products will not only provide data-rich bathymetric maps of locations within California, Wyoming, Jamaica and beyond, but also a snapshot in time of the geophysical and ecological status of that particular location. In addition to the physical equipment, this award will provide funding for software licenses, in-person training, and time for a research associate who will deploy, operate, maintain, and manage the system and all associated bathymetric data.

The research associate will also provide technical support and create training materials, facilitating the long-term use of the system by Occidental and the broader research community.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.