Marine Tech in the Bayou City: An Experiential Education Experience
Abstract
Training and expertise in underwater exploration with advanced marine technology is a must for today's STEM graduates. Much of this training can be initiated in relatively inexpensive ways using local expertise and technologies. Instead of going to sea, we have previously demonstrated marine survey techniques by exploring the shallow waters of Houston's bayous. This setting has served to encourage participant's intrinsic motivation. In this study attendees were given the opportunity to fly/pilot a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), an autonomous surface vehicle (ASV), and participate in relevant lectures and data analysis. To achieve a quantitative evaluation of the training, participants provided responses to a list of focused questions before and after the survey exercises. Initially, a multibeam survey (200 m x 50 m) was conducted by Survey Equipment Services, Inc. using an Teledyne Oceanscience Z-Boat ASV with an Integrated 200 - 460 kHz Odom MB2 Multibeam System. Using the multibeam survey data research students identified acoustic targets on the bayou floor for further investigation. Target identification was achieved using a Predator II (Seatronics, Inc., an Acteon company) ROV mounted with a Teledyne BlueView Technologies M900-130 900 kHz, and 1.4 - 3 MHz Sound Metrics ARIS Explorer 3000 imaging sonars. Multibeam data delineated a 90 m long, 45 m wide, and 8 m deep hollow, interpreted as a confluence scour created at the junction of the Buffalo and White Oak Bayous. A raised bank downstream of the hollow within the main channel is attributed to rapid sedimentation in a region of post confluence flow deceleration. Targets in the imaging sonar were identified as boulder-sized transported riprap, fluvial sediment, and sand waves. Review of participant's survey results using a Wilcoxon signed rank test indicated statistically significant results across all 30 survey questions. Positive improvements were reported across the board in questions related to three focus areas; awareness, experience, and interest in/of marine geoscience activities. These encouraging results confirm the feasibility of local high-resolution studies as training activities, as well as feeding local and national graduate field programs, and producing data that could be useful to city and state engineers for bayou design.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFMED21A0258B
- Keywords:
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- 0805 Elementary and secondary education;
- EDUCATION;
- 0815 Informal education;
- EDUCATION;
- 0820 Curriculum and laboratory design;
- EDUCATION;
- 0850 Geoscience education research;
- EDUCATION