Web-based spatiotemporal visualization of marine environment data

With long-term marine surveys and research, and especially with the development of new marine environment monitoring technologies, prodigious amounts of complex marine environmental data are generated, and continuously increase rapidly. Features of these data include massive volume, widespread distribution, multiple-sources, heterogeneous, multi-dimensional and dynamic in structure and time. The present study recommends an integrative visualization solution for these data, to enhance the visual display of data and data archives, and to develop a joint use of these data distributed among different organizations or communities. This study also analyses the web services technologies and defines the concept of the marine information gird, then focuses on the spatiotemporal visualization method and proposes a process-oriented spatiotemporal visualization method. We discuss how marine environmental data can be organized based on the spatiotemporal visualization method, and how organized data are represented for use with web services and stored in a reusable fashion. In addition, we provide an original visualization architecture that is integrative and based on the explored technologies. In the end, we propose a prototype system of marine environmental data of the South China Sea for visualizations of Argo floats, sea surface temperature fields, sea current fields, salinity, in-situ investigation data, and ocean stations. An integration visualization architecture is illustrated on the prototype system, which highlights the process-oriented temporal visualization method and demonstrates the benefit of the architecture and the methods described in this study.

Particle-attached and free-living bacterial communities in a contrasting marine environment: Victoria Harbor, Hong Kong

Diversity of particle-attached and free-living marine bacteria in Victoria Harbor, Hong Kong, and its adjacent coastal and estuarial environments was investigated using DNA fingerprinting and clone library analysis. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) analysis of 16S rRNA genes showed that bacterial communities in three stations of Victoria Harbor were similar, but differed from those in adjacent coastal and estuarine stations. Particle-attached and free-living bacterial community composition differed in the Victoria Harbor area. DNA sequencing of 28 bands from DGGE gel showed Alphaproteobacteria was the most abundant group, followed by the Bacteroidetes, and other Proteobacteria. Bacterial species richness (number of DGGE bands) differed among stations and populations (particle-attached and free-living; bottom and surface). BIOENV analysis indicated that the concentrations of suspended solids were the major contributing parameter for the spatial variation of total bacterial community structure. Samples from representative stations were selected for clone library (548 clones) construction and their phylogenetic distributions were similar to those of sequences from DGGE. Approximately 80% of clones were affiliated to Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes and Cyanobacteria. The possible influences of dynamic pollution and hydrological conditions in the Victoria Harbor area on the particle-attached and free-living bacterial community structures were discussed.

Particle-attached and free-living bacterial communities in a contrasting marine environment: Victoria Harbor, Hong Kong

Diversity of particle-attached and free-living marine bacteria in Victoria Harbor, Hong Kong, and its adjacent coastal and estuarial environments was investigated using DNA fingerprinting and clone library analysis. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) analysis of 16S rRNA genes showed that bacterial communities in three stations of Victoria Harbor were similar, but differed from those in adjacent coastal and estuarine stations. Particle-attached and free-living bacterial community composition differed in the Victoria Harbor area. DNA sequencing of 28 bands from DGGE gel showed Alphaproteobacteria was the most abundant group, followed by the Bacteroidetes, and other Proteobacteria. Bacterial species richness (number of DGGE bands) differed among stations and populations (particle-attached and free-living; bottom and surface). BIOENV analysis indicated that the concentrations of suspended solids were the major contributing parameter for the spatial variation of total bacterial community structure. Samples from representative stations were selected for clone library (548 clones) construction and their phylogenetic distributions were similar to those of sequences from DGGE. Approximately 80% of clones were affiliated to Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes and Cyanobacteria. The possible influences of dynamic pollution and hydrological conditions in the Victoria Harbor area on the particle-attached and free-living bacterial community structures were discussed.

Study on corrosion of steels in marine environment by corrosion simulation device

Three kinds of steels were studied using electrically connected hanging specimen in the corrosion simulation device and offshore long scale hanging specimen. The experimental results obtained by the two methods show that the device can better reflect the offshore corrosion environment. A Ni-Cu-P steel specimen was studied through analysis of the specimen's corrosion products and corrosion types. The surface of the samples before and after the removal of the rust layer produced by these two methods were observed and compared after some experiments. The microstructure of the corrosion products under different marine environments were analyzed and compared through IR. It indicated good correlation between the electrically connected hanging specimen method and the long scale hanging specimen method.