Did you know UAF recently received a NASA award to fund continued ocean research?

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has awarded University of Alaska researchers $730,000 for three years of research for a project that will support NASA’s mission to seek a better understanding of the ocean’s role in the Earth system. 

William Burt, the principal investigator of the project and a faculty member at UAF’s College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, and his team will use the NASA MUREP funding to compare satellite imagery of ocean organisms with 25 years of ship-based measurements collected in the Gulf of Alaska. The comparison will help scientists better understand how the ocean is changing due to climate change and apply this information to fisheries forecasting models.

“A lot of major breakthroughs have happened from our ability to measure the ocean from space,” Burt said. “To understand the whole system, you need global data.”

The funding is from the Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry component of NASA’s Minority University Research and Education Project. As an Alaska Native- and Native Hawaiian-serving institution, the University of Alaska was one of only 10 universities to receive a MUREP award.  

Learn more about this project here.