A mini-workshop to define scientific strategies and next steps for optimizing the OOI-node on Hydrate Ridge

Oregon State University, Corvallis OR

Investigators

Abstract

Marine gas hydrates comprise a vast offshore reservoir of natural gas. They provide a potential significant untapped energy resource and also present serious potential continental slope landslide hazards capable of generating devastating tsunamis as they decompose and destabilize slope sediments as seawater warms. This workshop on natural marine gas hydrates supports the participation of US scientists at a 1.5-day workshop aimed at showcasing the infrastructure and capabilities of the new NSF-funded and operational Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) cabled infrastructure at Hydrate Ridge off the coast of the northwestern US. The workshop provides a venue for discussion of science and scientific questions that can be tackled at the Hydrate Ridge node, one of three instrumented sites on the cabled observatory. The Hydrate Ridge node was originally envisioned as a natural laboratory where the temporal evolution of dynamic gas hydrate systems could be examined in detail to determine fluxes of methane from the seafloor into the ocean and understand the biogeochemical coupling associated with gas-hydrate formation and dissociation. The OOI Hydrate Ridge workshop will be held March 4th and 5th, 2016 at the same location and immediately following 4th Gordon Research Conference on Natural Gas Hydrates in Galveston Texas. The timing and location of the workshop were designed to be as cost effective as possible by leveraging off the travel of Gordon Conference attendees who will stay an additional 1.5 days to attend this workshop. Funding from NSF will be used to help subsidize the additional conference days and support the participation of key researchers who may otherwise not be attending the Gordon Conference, but whose input was instrumental in generating site survey data and defining the research objectives for the Hydrate Ridge node in OOI's original founding documents. Also to be discussed will be the wealth of knowledge and technological advances that have taken place since the initial guiding scientific documents. Strategies for optimizing the scientific returns that can be made possible by this new facility will also be discussed. Broader impacts of the workshop include potential impacts on energy, climate, and geohazards with deep linkages into biology, chemistry, physics, permafrost science, marine science, geotechnical engineering, and petroleum engineering.