Introduction to the <i>Limnology and Oceanography</i> Special Issue on Autonomous and Lagrangian Platforms and Sensors (ALPS)

TLDR

The issue focuses on recent advances in autonomous and Lagrangian platforms and sensors that enable interdisciplinary aquatic research across diverse temporal and spatial scales, including challenging environments and continuous, near‑real‑time monitoring. The paper introduces the special issue by offering historical context, motivation, and a summary table of the included studies. The issue showcases a range of ALPS platforms—surface drifters, subsurface floats, gliders, unmanned boats, autonomous underwater vehicles, and instrumented animals—illustrated through a tabular overview.

Abstract

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. The collective papers treat a variety of problems that generally require measurements spanning a continuum of temporal and spatial scales. ALPS platforms in this issue include surface drifters, profiling and other types of subsurface floats, gliders, unmanned boats, autonomous underwater vehicles, and instrumented animals. ALPS platforms can 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. This introductory paper provides historical perspectives, background, motivation for the issue, and a tabular summary of papers in the present collection.