The Australian Coastal Ocean Radar Network, ACORN, is an IMOS facility based in EES at JCU. It is located here because of the internationally respected research of Prof Mal Heron and his colleagues on HF radar and its applications over many years. HF radar is a technology that can provide surface current, wave and wind maps over the coastal ocean up to 200km from the coast depending on the radio frequency used and the environmental (oceanographic and radio interference) conditions. The radars are located on the coast (or offshore islands) and receive signals backscattered from ocean surface waves that carry with them information about their speed, height and direction. This information can be extracted from the radar signal and converted to current, wave and wind data within the ACORN facility. These data are
then transferred to the IMOS data archive in the form of Netcdf files where they can be accessed by researchers through the IMOS data portal . The ACORN team have installed radars at locations in West and South Australia, and here in Queensland at Lady Elliot Island and Tannum Sands looking north over the Great Barrier Reef and are responsible for maintaining these sites and keeping the data flowing. A radar at Coff’s Harbour in NSW will be installed early in 2012.

Deployment of the radars is in support of research in regional IMOS Nodes where there is a range of identified questions concerned with boundary currents and associated eddies, and their interaction with the shelf water and topography. These physical phenomena are linked to productivity and connectivity of biological populations, and to management issues such as coral bleaching and disease transmission. The ACORN system provides a basis for applied research into wave modelling and offers test sites for hydrodynamic modelling. We are very keen to encourage use of the data and invite interested parties, e.g. researchers, potential PhD students, users of coastal oceanographic data, to contact us for more information or to discuss collaborations.

Publication lists, example maps and other information and links can be found on the IMOS ACORN website.

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