Broader Impacts

Pursuing the causes of "dead zones" -- a widespread problem with current public visibility -- has an educational appeal that can be exploited to provide exciting and relevant learning experiences for K-12 as well as adult students. An observatory, with its visualization capability, can provide a direct appreciation and apprehension of the more abstract concepts of marine science. Yearly workshops for users, teachers and managers will have hands on demonstrations of the CBEO. Students will enter and use data collected from yearly cruises of the Hampton University's MAST (Multicultural students At Sea Together) project. A teacher-fellow from the UMCES - Maryland Sea Grant Environmental Science Education Partnership (ESEP) program will develop a classroom application for K-12, which will be tested in the teacher's classroom during the school year. Society will benefit from both the educational and scientific progress attending the development of the CBEO in particular and environmental observatories in general. They will provide a new and transformative window into the workings of environmental systems.