Table of Contents, Vol. 53(5, part 2), September 2008

Limnology and Oceanography Special Issue on Autonomous and Lagrangian Platforms and Sensors (ALPS)
Mary Jane Perry and Mark Moline, coordinating editors
Tommy D. Dickey and Eric C. Itsweire, issue editors

This issue is devoted to recent developments of Autonomous and Lagrangian Platforms and Sensors (ALPS) and their uses for solving a broad range of interdisciplinary aquatic problems that span a continuum of spatial and temporal scales. ALPS platforms in this issue include: surface drifters, profiling and other types of sub-surface floats, gliders, unmanned boats, autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), and instrumented animals. These types of platforms provide access in difficult environments (e.g., under ice and in high sea states). They are also important for emerging networked ocean and lake observing systems that require continuous measurements and near real-time data.

We thank all of the authors and reviewers of the papers that appear in this issue. Editor-in-chief, Everett Fee, was an invaluable resource and Lucille Doucette greatly facilitated the editing of the manuscripts. Financial support for the publication of this Special Issue was provided by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research through a grant to Mark Moline (OCE-0737167). Tommy Dickey, Mark Moline, and Mary Jane Perry acknowledge support by the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Ocean Partnership Program.

This special issue is dedicated to Henry Stommel who understood the challenge and necessity of sampling a turbulent ocean across a continuum of space and time scales, and who envisioned solutions using autonomous platforms. His vision was crystallized as the mythical World Ocean Observing System (WOOS) program that would send gliders on missions from the Slocum Mission Control Center on Nonamesset Island, one of the Elizabeth Islands near his Cape Cod home. Stommel continues to be an inspiration to generations of aquatic scientists and the papers in this special issue are a tribute to his ideas.

Articles