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INSPIRE Environmental was featured in Providence Business News (PBN) this week, with a great piece written by Emily Gowdey-Backus. PBN interviewed INSPIRE Managing Partner Drew Carey, who described the local work that INSPIRE is engaging in, right here in Rhode Island.
The full article can be found here: http://pbn.com/At-home-on-ocean-floor,120142?
The INSPIRE team is gearing up for a week of presenting our research and connecting with our clients, colleagues, and friends in New Orleans. We’ll be at the Ninth International Conference on Remediation and Management of Contaminated Sediments, presented by Battelle from Tuesday through Friday, January 10-13.
Dr. S. Kersey Sturdivant will be presenting findings of research undertaken following the Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico. His talk will take place on Tuesday at 1:50 pm in Grand Ballroom E.
Animal-Sediment Response to and Recovery from the Deepwater Horizon Accident: A Worm’s Eye View.
J.D. Germano, D.G. Browning, S.K. Sturdivant, and D.A. Carey. (INSPIRE Environmental/USA)
John Hardin will be presenting in poster group 2 at the Long-Term Monitoring Strategies poster session (A11 #33). John’s poster will be displayed from Wednesday 7:00 a.m. through Thursday 1:00 p.m. Presentations/Reception will take place Wednesday, 5:45 p.m.–7:00 p.m.
Short- and Long-Term Recovery of Benthic Communities Following Dredge Material Disposal: A Case Study of the LA-3 Dredged Disposal Site.
S.K. Sturdivant, J.D. Germano, D.A. Carey, J. Hardin, and A. Ota. (INSPIRE Environmental/USA)
If you are in New Orleans this week, please get in touch. We’d love to see you!
Those who are interested in learning more about INSPIRE Environmental have another chance to meet our scientists at the Oceanology International Conference 2017, from February 14 – 16 in San Diego, CA. INSPIRE will be exhibiting a booth, and Dr. Drew A. Carey will present a talk on the importance data visualization.
INSPIRE Environmental is onstage today at TEDx Newport! We’ll be sharing a worm’s eye view of the seafloor and the innovative camera technology Inspire’s scientists invented. The talk will provide a brief introduction to Sediment Profile Imaging (SPI) and then discuss novel ways that our scientists have worked to visualize the seafloor.
2016 marks the inaugural TEDx Newport event. INSPIRE would like to thank the whole TEDx team who worked so hard to make this event a success. We are proud to be showcasing our work to the community of Newport, RI during this event.
One of the Sediment Profile Imaging (SPI) camera’s most powerful attributes is its ability to convey ecological information in a format that most people can understand quite easily: a picture.
As one of the developers of the technology, we had the privilege of introducing it to the government of Hong Kong in 1993, and it became a key component of the four-year, territory-wide monitoring program associated with the massive dredging/land reclamation that was a key aspect of the new Chep Lap Kok airport construction. We introduced the technology in many areas outside of the United States, including Canada, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, China, and Azerbaijan. SPI is a powerful technology that provides an innovative and cost-effective solution to many marine environmental monitoring programs.
Sediment Profile Imaging allows rapid data acquisition during field sampling (the camera is literally “pogo-sticked” across the seafloor). A wide variety of physical and biological parameters can be measured from each image.
Because traditional seafloor sampling techniques are expensive and time consuming, an efficient sampling strategy for surveys can be an enormous aid to completing an efficient survey. SPI aids in determining the location of traditional sampling stations by rapidly characterizing the variation in benthic sedimentary and community conditions. Limited sampling resources can be allocated to the optimum sampling locations to accurately characterize the variance that exists in a particular area. All too often the results of monitoring programs reveal that a particular parameter of interest has either been over- or under-sampled as a result of “flying blind” initially and then sticking with the initial station locations that were arbitrarily selected from a nautical chart.
Large areas of seafloor can quickly and efficiently be surveyed with SPI. For many monitoring objectives, SPI technology can provide the necessary answers without the need to collect grab samples or to repeatedly enumerate and identify individual invertebrates and assemble long species lists each time a sampling study is performed.
Because the SPI camera can obtain pictures rapidly and efficiently, it can supplement traditional sampling methods. SPI achieves this by “filling in the gaps” between traditional chemical and biological sampling locations. The camera can accurately delineate gradients in biological community type, organic loading, or sediment grain-size between fixed station locations.
Many environmental programs have suffered because of their inability to convey results to regulators or a public audience who may lack a marine science background. One of the camera’s most powerful attributes is its ability to convey ecological information in an easily understandable format: a picture.
Over the past 10 years, we have come to realize that SPI technology’s most powerful asset is this ability. SPI was able to provide the decisive evidence in several environmental litigation cases concerning ocean disposal impacts. SPI technology proved that impacts were transitory and that a full ecosystem recovery had occurred.
Learn more about SPI by visiting our downloads library:
Downloads Library
