{"id":31624,"date":"2019-05-20T09:25:58","date_gmt":"2019-05-20T13:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fondriest.com\/news\/?p=31624"},"modified":"2019-05-20T09:34:14","modified_gmt":"2019-05-20T13:34:14","slug":"learning-with-the-student-drifter-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fondriest.com\/news\/learning-with-the-student-drifter-program.htm","title":{"rendered":"Learning With the Student Drifter Program"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The mission of the Student Drifter Program, initiated by the<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nefsc.noaa.gov\/\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and now administered by the Gulf of Maine Lobster Foundation (<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gomlf.org\/drifters\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">GOMLF<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">), is \u201cto establish scientific partnerships between schools around the region and engage students in activities and communication about ocean climate science.\u201d NOAA oceanographer James P. Manning spoke with EM about the program and how it benefits students and the environment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The drifters, typically made with an aluminum (or bamboo) frame and cloth sails, flow primarily underwater with a transmitter above the waterline to send data on its location via satellite every few hours. They stay active with battery power for several months. During that time, they can be <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nefsc.noaa.gov\/drifter\/drift_X.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">tracked online<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. As the drifters send data back to students, they can record where the currents carry their instrument.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt\u2019s a fun program that involves a lot of people,\u201d explains Mr. Manning. \u201cNot only the people who deploy them but also the people who find them. We have a database now of hundreds of beach walkers that have found these drifters and connected with us, and oftentimes they get involved with the program and bring the drifter into their local schools to refurbish and redeploy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe simplest model just gives its position, which in turn gives us a record of the current, the ocean flow,\u201d continues Mr. Manning. \u201cGiven position every hour, we can calculate the speed of the ocean, which is needed for us to validate various numerical models. \u00a0These are like weather models of the ocean. You can think of the drifters as weather balloons in the oceanic atmosphere. Weather balloons help weathermen with their models of the winds, and these drifters are an underwater form of that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The students follow the track online using<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nefsc.noaa.gov\/drifter\/drift_fama_2018_1.html\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a website<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> where they can see the path of their drifter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThey can, depending on the level of the school, download the data, which is basically time, latitude, and longitude,\u201d Mr. Manning describes. \u201cThis allows them to figure out the speed and try to predict, for example, where the drifter is going to go, and then compare those predictions to what ocean models predict. The models have a long way to go before they can predict the ocean currents more than a few days into the future\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">STEM education with drifters<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The drifters are typically constructed in classrooms, mostly at the high school level, although any grade level from elementary school to post-graduate can handle the work.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt takes them a few hours to put them together according to our instructions, kind of like making a kite,\u201d states Mr. Manning. \u201cThe drifters are built mostly from materials the students find at the local hardware store. The only fancy thing is a little transmitter that we send them in the mail which they attach on top of the drifter. The satellite transmitter reports its position at a specified rate depending on how long we want the battery to last and how much money is available to pay the satellite fees.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Students and educators deploy the drifters with the help of NOAA and members of the local seagoing community.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWhen it\u2019s time to deploy, the school usually takes the drifters out and gives them to local fishermen, any kind of mariner who\u2019s going offshore,\u201d comments Mr. Manning. \u201cIt\u2019s usually not a problem finding a vessel to take it out to sea. Those mariners are just as interested as the students are in where things are going and following the track. The program itself is a collaboration between schools and the local fishermen.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Depending on what the teams hope to measure, there are different drifters they might deploy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cFor example, we have the standard drifters that look like box kites,\u201d Mr. Manning says. \u201cThis drifter stays just below the surface, with very little exposed to the wind, because you want to measure the water flow and not the wind. So the standard drifter is just an underwater unit with a transmitter above the sea surface. Then there\u2019s the drogue drifter which is tethered down deep in the water. It\u2019s got the long tether at a certain ocean level to measure flow other than at the sea surface.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">NOAA also works with Educational Passages, an organization that helps students deploy and track \u201cminiboats\u201d that are moved partially by the wind.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe miniboat blows in the wind as much as it does with the current,\u201d remarks Mr. Manning. \u201cThe advantage of this is that they go much faster, and they cross the ocean quicker. We put out about seventy of these from the New England coast that landed in Europe. They take at least several months and often multiple years to cross the ocean, and then wherever they land, they are brought into the local schools who often \u00a0Skype with the original local schools here in the US. That\u2019s the fun part.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Valuable data for multiple uses<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Two different websites showcase these popular student programs:<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/studentdrifters.org\/\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Studentdrifters.org<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> focuses primarily on ocean drifters, and<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/educationalpassages.org\/\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">educationalpassages.org<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is linked to the miniboats.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThere\u2019s been on the order of 140 or so schools that have been involved in building them, mostly around New England,\u201d explains Mr. Manning. \u201cWe\u2019ve put out close to 1,500 drifters over the years. It\u2019s a fun project because after having built the thing, they\u2019re connected to it, and they\u2019re actually contributing to ocean observing systems. Our goal is to share these data with other researchers to help them validate their numerical models. That\u2019s our main motivation: to get more data out there so that the people that are developing these sophisticated ocean and especially coastal shallow water models have data they can use to test and refine them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sharing the data with other scientists helps students understand the value of the long-term fieldwork they are helping conduct.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThat\u2019s the whole purpose of getting youth involved because we need more physical oceanographers and STEM career-driven students for our workforce,\u201d adds Mr. Manning. \u201cThere are not too many US students entering this field. They all want to be marine biologists, or they want to study sharks and things like that, but there are not too many that are interested in the physics of the ocean.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Without enough people studying the physics of the oceans, however, it isn\u2019t possible to plan for things like climate change.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt\u2019s critical to have a low-cost method to be able to keep monitoring for decades because the very slow, subtle changes in ocean circulation are hard to detect unless you continue to put things out there,\u201d states Mr. Manning. \u201cWe can\u2019t rely totally on the models to make predictions.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To get involved in the NOAA Student Drifter program, school representatives should visit the studentdrifters.org site, which directs them on how to get started.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe try to find government grants and distribute them out to schools so they don\u2019t have to come up with the funding themselves,\u201d remarks Mr. Manning. \u201cMost public schools can\u2019t afford it, even though it\u2019s pretty basic parts from a hardware store, by the time you buy the transmitter and pay the satellite fees, it\u2019s close to $1,000 a unit.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the future, the NOAA team hopes to add more sensors to the student drifters.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWhen we started out it was just latitude and longitude, but some of them, especially the miniboats, now have little microcomputer sensor packages that can measure other parameters,\u201d comments Mr. Manning. \u201cThey can currently measure sea surface temperature, but we\u2019ve also put out a few with oxygen and pH sensors, for example. So there\u2019s lots of potential for the future when these sensors get more accurate. \u00a0Any school can put these sensor packages together cheaply, and learn more about computer science along the way.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Manning and the Student Drifter team are also hoping to expand the program. Erin Pelletier and Cassie Stymiest, based at GOMLF in Kennebunk ME, are now conducting most of the program operations while Manning works on tracking and data analysis.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe also work with one of the many regional associations for ocean observing systems,<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/neracoos.org\/\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">NERACOOS<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,\u201d states Mr. Manning. \u201cAround the country, there are 11 of these regional associations within NOAA. While we work primarily with NERACOOS because we are located in the Northeast, there are others that could implement the program in their region as well.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Beyond that, Mr. Manning and the team are simply hoping to keep the Student Drifter program alive.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI hope to keep it going,\u201d affirms Mr. Manning. \u201cI have two colleagues in Maine that I\u2019m hoping will keep it going because I\u2019ve only got a couple more years to go here before I retire. They\u2019ve been a big help in the administration, but I just want to work with the data now. There\u2019s so much data that I need to focus on that, while they can work with the schools and get the instruments out there collecting the valuable data we need.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NOAA\u2019s Student Drifter Program teaches kids about science and helps generate high-quality data about Earth\u2019s oceans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":31626,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,8,44],"tags":[1681,1680,1684,60,1679,1602,109,74,1682,1166,1678,1683],"class_list":["post-31624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-articles","category-monitoring_tech-htm","category-newsfeed","category-oceans-coasts","tag-currents","tag-drifters","tag-educationalpassages-org","tag-featured","tag-gulf-of-maine-lobster-foundation","tag-neracoos","tag-news-ticker","tag-noaa","tag-ocean-flow","tag-stem","tag-student-drifter-program","tag-studentdrifters-org"],"remote_post_permalink":false,"remote_post_featured_image":false,"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Learning With the Student Drifter Program<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"NOAA\u2019s Student Drifter Program teaches kids about science and helps generate high-quality data about Earth\u2019s oceans.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fondriest.com\/news\/learning-with-the-student-drifter-program.htm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Learning With the Student Drifter Program\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"NOAA\u2019s Student Drifter Program teaches kids about science and helps generate high-quality data about Earth\u2019s oceans.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.fondriest.com\/news\/learning-with-the-student-drifter-program.htm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Environmental Monitor\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-05-20T13:25:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-05-20T13:34:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.fondriest.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/NOAA_drifter.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"940\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"627\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Karla Lant\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Karla Lant\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.fondriest.com\\\/news\\\/learning-with-the-student-drifter-program.htm#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.fondriest.com\\\/news\\\/learning-with-the-student-drifter-program.htm\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Karla Lant\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.fondriest.com\\\/news\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/51170f7bfa3a05b94cea6f517ce4e79b\"},\"headline\":\"Learning With the Student Drifter Program\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-05-20T13:25:58+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-05-20T13:34:14+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.fondriest.com\\\/news\\\/learning-with-the-student-drifter-program.htm\"},\"wordCount\":1510,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.fondriest.com\\\/news\\\/learning-with-the-student-drifter-program.htm#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/news.fondriest.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2019\\\/05\\\/NOAA_drifter.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"currents\",\"drifters\",\"educationalpassages.org\",\"featured\",\"Gulf of Maine Lobster Foundation\",\"NERACOOS\",\"news ticker\",\"NOAA\",\"ocean flow\",\"STEM\",\"Student Drifter Program\",\"studentdrifters.org\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Featured Articles\",\"Monitoring Technology\",\"Newsfeed\",\"Oceans &amp; 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