1 U.S. GLOBal ocean ECosystems dynamics U.S. GLOBal ocean ECosystems dynamics U.S. GLOBEC <p> U.S. GLOBEC (GLOBal ocean ECosystems dynamics) is a research program organized by oceanographers and fisheries scientists to address the question of how global climate change may affect the abundance and production of animals in the sea. </p> <p> The U.S. GLOBEC Program currently has major research efforts underway in the Georges Bank / Northwest Atlantic Region, and the Northeast Pacific (with components in the California Current and in the Coastal Gulf of Alaska). U.S. GLOBEC is a major contributor to International GLOBEC efforts now underway in the Southern Ocean and Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) .... </p> http://www.usglobec.org/ http://www.usglobec.org/images/logo.png 1991-01-01T00:00:01 2 U.S. Joint Global Ocean Flux Study U.S. Joint Global Ocean Flux Study U.S. JGOFS <p> The United States Joint Global Ocean Flux Study was a national component of international JGOFS and an integral part of global climate change research. </p> <p> The U.S. launched the Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS) in the late 1980s to study the ocean carbon cycle. An ambitious goal was set to understand the controls on the concentrations and fluxes of carbon and associated nutrients in the ocean. A new field of ocean biogeochemistry emerged with an emphasis on quality measurements of carbon system parameters and interdisciplinary field studies of the biological, chemical and physical process which control the ocean carbon cycle. As we studied ocean biogeochemistry, we learned that our simple views of carbon uptake and transport were severely limited, and a new "wave" of ocean science was born. U.S. JGOFS has been supported primarily by the U.S. National Science Foundation in collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Energy and the Office of Naval Research. U.S. JGOFS, ended in 2005 with the conclusion of the Synthesis and Modeling Project (SMP). </p> http://usjgofs.whoi.edu/ http://bcodata.whoi.edu/images/logo_jgofsg.gif http://bcodata.whoi.edu/images/logo_jgofsg.gif 1984-01-01T00:00:01 2005-12-31T23:59:59 3 Census of Marine Life Census of Marine Life CoML The Census of Marine Life is a global network of researchers in more than 80 nations engaged in a 10-year scientific initiative to assess and explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of life in the oceans. The world's first comprehensive Census of Marine Life - past, present, and future - will be released in 2010. <p> The stated purpose of the Census of Marine Life is to assess and explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of marine life. Each plays an important role in what is known, unknown, and may never be known about what lives in the global ocean. <p> First, diversity. The Census aims to make for the first time a comprehensive global list of all forms of life in the sea. No such unified list yet exists. Census scientists estimate that about 230,000 species of marine animals have been described and reside in jars in collections in museums of natural history and other repositories. Since the Census began in 2000, researchers have added more than 5600 species to the lists. They aim to add many thousands more by 2010. The database of the Census already includes records for more than 16 million records, old and new. By 2010, the goal is to have all the old and the new species in an on-line encyclopedia with a webpage for every species. In addition, we will estimate how many species remain unknown, that is, remain to be discovered. The number could be astonishingly large, perhaps a million or more, if all small animals and protists are included. For comparison, biologists have described about 1.5 million terrestrial plants and animals. <p> Second, distribution. The Census aims to produce maps where the animals have been observed or where they could live, that is, the territory or range of the species. Knowing the range matters a lot for people concerned about, for example, possible consequences of global climate change. <p> Third, abundance. No Census is complete without measures of abundance. We want to know not only that there is such a thing as a Madagascar crab but how many there are. For marine life, populations are being estimated either in numbers or in total kilos, called biomass. <p> To complete the context, it is important to understand the top motivations for the Census of Marine Life. Most importantly, much of the ocean is unexplored. Most of the records in its database are for observations near the surface, and down to 1000 meters. No observations have been made in most of the deep ocean, while most of the ocean is deep. <p> Another important issue is that diversity varies in space. Marine hot spots, like the rain forests of the land, exist off for large fish off the coasts of Brazil and Australia. The goal is to know much more about marine hot spots, to help conserve these large fish. Their abundance and thus their diversity is changing, especially for commercially important species. Between 1952 and 1976, for example, fishermen and their customers emptied many areas of the ocean of tuna. <p> The Census has evolved a strategy of 14 field projects to touch the major habitats and groups of species in the global ocean. Eleven field projects address habitats, such as seamounts or the Arctic Ocean. Three field projects look globally at animals that either traverse the seas or appear globally distributed: the top predators such as tuna and the plankton and the microbes. The projects employ a mix of technologies. These include acoustics or sound, optics or cameras, tags placed on individual animals that store or report data, and genetics, as well as some actual capture of animals. The technologies complement one another. Sound can survey large areas in the ocean, while light cannot. Light can capture detail and characters that sound cannot. And genetics can make identifications from fragments of specimens or larvae where pictures tell little. <p> This mix of curiosity, need to know, technology, and scientists willing to investigate the unexplored and undiscovered will result in a Census of Marine Life in 2010 that provides a much clearer picture of what lives below the surface around the globe. Several reasons make such a report timely, indeed urgent. Crises in the sea are reported regularly. One recent study predicted the end of commercial fishery globally by 2050, if current trends persist. Better information is needed to fashion the management that will sustain fisheries, conserve diversity, reverse losses of habitat, reduce impacts of pollution, and respond to global climate change. Hence, there are biological, economic, philosophical and political reasons to push for greater exploration and understanding of the ocean and its inhabitants. Indeed, the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity requires signatories to collect information on living resources, but, as yet, no nation has a complete baseline of such information. The Census of Marine Life's global network of researchers will help to fill this knowledge gap, providing critical information to help guide decisions on how to manage global marine resources for the future. <p> [Text copied from the CoML web site, November 5, 2008] http://www.coml.org/ 2001-01-01T00:00:01 2010-12-31T23:59:59 9 United States Surface Ocean Lower Atmosphere Study United States Surface Ocean Lower Atmosphere Study U.S. SOLAS <p>The Surface Ocean Lower Atmosphere Study (SOLAS) program is designed to enable researchers from different disciplines to interact and investigate the multitude of processes and interactions between the coupled ocean and atmosphere.</p> <p> Oceanographers and atmospheric scientists are working together to improve understanding of the fate, transport, and feedbacks of climate relevant compounds, and also weather and hazards that are affected by processes at the surface ocean.</p> <p>Oceanographers and atmospheric scientists are working together to improve understanding of the fate, transport, and feedbacks of climate relevant compounds.</p> <p> Physical, chemical, and biological research near the ocean-atmosphere interface must be performed in synergy to extend our current knowledge to adequately understand and forecast changes on short and long time frames and over local and global spatial scales. </p> <p> The findings obtained from SOLAS are used to improve knowledge at process scale that will lead to better quantification of fluxes of climate relevant compounds such as CO2, sulfur and nitrogen compounds, hydrocarbons and halocarbons, as well as dust, energy and momentum. This activity facilitates a fundamental understanding to assist the societal needs for climate change, environmental health, weather prediction, and national security.</p> <p> The US SOLAS program is a component of the International SOLAS program where collaborations are forged with investigators around the world to examine SOLAS issues ubiquitous to the world's oceans and atmosphere. <br /><br /> <a href="http://www.solas-int.org/">¬ª International SOLAS Web site</a></p> <h4>Science Implementation Strategy Reports</h4> <p><a href="http://data.bco-dmo.org/US_SOLAS/US-SOLAS_Science_Implementation_Strategy.pdf">US-SOLAS</a> (4 MB PDF file) <br /> <a href="http://www.us-solas.org:8080/Plone/science-implementation-strategy">Other SOLAS reports</a> are available for download from the US SOLAS Web site</p> http://www.us-solas.org/ http://data.bco-dmo.org/images/logos/logo_USSOLAS.jpg 2006-01-01T00:00:01 10 Iron Synthesis Iron Synthesis FeSyn <p>The two main objectives of the Iron Synthesis program (SCOR Working Group proposal, 2005), are: <br /> 1. Data compilation: assembling a common open-access database of the <em>in situ</em> iron experiments, beginning with the first period (1993-2002; Ironex-1, Ironex-2, SOIREE, EisenEx, SEEDS-1; SOFeX, SERIES) where primary articles have already been published, to be followed by the 2004 experiments where primary articles are now in progress (EIFEX, SEEDS-2; SAGE, FeeP); similarly for the natural fertilizations S.O.JGOFS (1992), CROZEX (2004/2005) and KEOPS (2005). <br /><br /> 2. Modeling and data synthesis of specific aspects of two or more such experiments for various topics such as physical mixing, phytoplankton productivity, overall ecosystem functioning, iron chemistry, CO2 budgeting, nutrient uptake ratios, DMS(P) processes, and combinations of these variables and processes. </p> <p>SCOR Working Group proposal, 2005. "The Legacy of <em>in situ</em> Iron Enrichments: Data Compilation and Modeling". <br /> <a href="http://www.scor-int.org/Working_Groups/wg131.htm " target="blank">http://www.scor-int.org/Working_Groups/wg131.htm</a> </p> <p>See also: SCOR Proceedings Vol. 42 Concepción, Chile October 2006, pgs: 13-16 2.3.3 Working Group on The Legacy of <em>in situ</em> Iron Enrichments: Data Compilation and Modeling.</p> <p>The first objective of the Iron Synthesis program involves a data recovery effort aimed at assembling a common, open-access database of data and metadata from a series of <em>in-situ</em> ocean iron fertilization experiments conducted between 1993 and 2005. Initially, funding for this effort is being provided by the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). <p>Through the combined efforts of the principal investigators of the individual projects and the staff of Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO), data currently available primarily through individuals, disparate reports and data agencies, and in multiple formats, are being collected and prepared for addition to the BCO-DMO database from which they will be freely available to the community.</p> <p>As data are contributed to the BCO-DMO office, they are organized into four overlapping categories: <br /> ¬ ¬ ¬ (1) Level 1, basic metadata <br /> ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ (e.g., description of project/study, general location, PI(s), participants); <br /> ¬ ¬ ¬ (2) Level 2, detailed metadata and basic shipboard data and routine ship's operations <br /> ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ (e.g., CTDs, underway measurements, sampling event logs); <br /> ¬ ¬ ¬ (3) Level 3, detailed metadata and data from specialized observations <br /> ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ (e.g., discrete observations, experimental results, rate measurements) and <br /> ¬ ¬ ¬ (4) Level 4, remaining datasets<br> ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬ (e.g., highest level of detailed data available from each study).</p> <p>Collaboration with BCO-DMO staff began in March of 2008 and initial efforts have been directed toward basic project descriptions, levels 1 and 2 metadata and basic data, with detailed and more detailed data files being incorporated as they become available and are processed.</p> <h3>Related file</h3> <a href=http://data.bco-dmo.org/Fe_Synthesis/Mesoscale_Iron_Enrichment_Experiments_1993-2005_Synthesis_and_Future_Directions_612.pdf >Program Documentation</a> </p><br><br> <p>The Iron Synthesis Program is funded jointly by the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF).</p> <img src="http://data.bco-dmo.org/images/icon_nsf.gif" width="94" height="94" /> ¬  ¬  <img src="http://data.bco-dmo.org/images/logos/logo2_SCOR.jpg" width="159" height="94" /> <br> 2007-01-01T00:00:01 11 NorthEast Consortium NorthEast Consortium NEC <div id="indexstatement"> The Northeast Consortium encourages and funds <strong><br /> cooperative research</strong> and monitoring projects in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank that have effective, <strong><br/> equal partnerships</strong> among fishermen, scientists, educators, and marine resource managers. </div> <p align="left">At the 2008 Maine Fisheremen's Forum, the Northeast Consortium organized a session on data collection and availability. Participants included several key organizations in the Gulf of Maine area, sharing what data are out there and how you can find them. <a href="oceans_of_data.shtml">Read more...</a> </p> <p align="left"><strong>The Northeast Consortium has joined the Gulf of Maine Ocean Data Partnership. </strong>The purpose of the GoMODP is to promote and coordinate the sharing, linking, electronic dissemination, and use of data on the Gulf of Maine region.</p> <p>The Northeast Consortium was created in 1999 to encourage and fund effective, equal partnerships among commercial fishermen, scientists, and other stakeholders to engage in cooperative research and monitoring projects in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank. The Northeast Consortium consists of four research institutions (University of New Hampshire, University of Maine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution), which are working together to foster this initiative.</p> <p>The Northeast Consortium administers nearly $5M annually from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for cooperative research on a broad range of topics including gear selectivity, fish habitat, stock assessments, and socioeconomics. The funding is appropriated to the National Marine Fisheries Service and administered by the University of New Hampshire on behalf of the Northeast Consortium. Funds are distributed through an annual open competition, which is announced via a Request for Proposals (RFP). All projects must involve partnership between commercial fishermen and scientists. </p> <p>The Northeast Consortium seeks to fund projects that will be conducted in a responsible manner. Cooperative research projects should be designed to minimize any negative impacts to ecosystems or marine organisms, and be consistent with accepted ethical research practices, including the use of animals and human subjects in research, scrutiny of research protocols by an institutional board of review, etc.</p> http://northeastconsortium.org/ 1999-01-01T00:00:01 17 North American Carbon Program North American Carbon Program NACP <p>The North American Carbon Program (NACP) is a multidisciplinary research program to obtain scientific understanding of North America's carbon sources and sinks and of changes in carbon stocks needed to meet societal concerns and to provide tools for decision makers. Successful execution of the NACP will require an unprecedented level of coordination among observational, experimental, and modeling efforts regarding terrestrial, oceanic, atmospheric, and human components. The NACP is supported by a number of different federal agencies through a variety of intramural and extramural funding mechanisms and award instruments. NACP will rely upon a rich and diverse array of existing observational networks, monitoring sites, and experimental field studies in North America and its adjacent oceans. Integrating these different program activities and maximizing synergy amongst them, will require expert guidance beyond the norm for large field programs in Earth system science and global climate change.<br> </p> <strong>Central Objective </strong> <p>The central objective of the North American Carbon Program is to measure and understand the sources and sinks of Carbon Dioxide (CO₂), Methane (CH₄), and Carbon Monoxide (CO) in North America and in adjacent ocean regions. </p> <p><strong>Goals</strong></p> <ul> <li>Develop quantitative scientific knowledge, robust observations, and models to determine the emissions and uptake of CO₂, CH₄, and CO, changes in carbon stocks, and the factors regulating these processes for North America and adjacent ocean basins.<br> </li> <li>Develop the scientific basis to implement full carbon accounting on regional and continental scales. This is the knowledge base needed to design monitoring programs for natural and managed CO₂ sinks and emissions of CH₄.<br> </li> <li>Support long-term quantitative measurements of fluxes, sources, and sinks of atmospheric CO₂ and CH₄, and develop forecasts for future trends.<br> </li> </ul> <p><strong>Science Questions </strong></p> <ul> <li>What is the carbon balance of North America and adjacent oceans? What are the geographic patterns of fluxes of CO₂, CH₄, and CO? How is the balance changing over time?<br> </li> <li> What processes control the sources and sinks of CO₂, CH₄, and CO, and how do the controls change with time?<br> </li> <li> Are there potential surprises where sources increase or sinks disappear?<br> </li> <li> How can we enhance and manage long-lived carbon sinks, and provide resources to support decision makers? </li> </ul> http://www.nacarbon.org/nacp/ http://bco-dmo.org/files/bcodmo/images/logos/logo_NACP.jpg 2005-01-01T00:00:01 18 Ocean Carbon & Biogeochemistry Ocean Carbon & Biogeochemistry OCB <p>The Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry program is not an ocean research program in the traditional sense. OCB Project Office staff members, working at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and OCB Steering Committee members work together with research investigators to achieve the overall program goals including promotion, planning, and coordination of collaborative, multidisciplinary research opportunities within the U.S. research community and with international partners. </p> <p> <strong>OCB Mission: </strong> to establish the evolving role of the ocean in the global carbon cycle, in the face of environmental change, through studies of marine biogeochemical cycles and associated ecosystems <br /> <br /> <strong>OCB Overarching Science Themes: </strong><br /> Improve understanding and prediction of: <br /> 1) oceanic uptake and release of atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases; <br /> 2) climate-sensitivities of biogeochemical cycles and interactions with ecosystem structure <br /> <br /> <strong>Identified Priorities (2007): </strong><br /> - Ocean acidification <br /> - Terrestrial/coastal carbon fluxes and exchanges <br /> - Climate sensitivities of and change in ecosystem structure and associated impacts on biogeochemical cycles <br /> - Mesopelagic ecological and biogeochemical interactions <br /> - Benthic-pelagic feedbacks on biogeochemical cycles <br /> - Ocean carbon uptake and storage </p> http://us-ocb.org/ http://bco-dmo.org/files/bcodmo/images/logos/logo_OCB.png 2006-01-01T00:00:01 19 U.S. GEOTRACES U.S. GEOTRACES U.S. GEOTRACES <p><strong>GEOTRACES</strong> is a <a href="http://www.jhu.edu/scor/GEOTRACES.htm">SCOR</a> sponsored program; and funding for program infrastructure development is provided by the <a href="http://www.nsf.gov">U.S. National Science Foundation</a>.</strong></p> <p>GEOTRACES gained momentum following a special symposium, S02: Biogeochemical cycling of trace elements and isotopes in the ocean and applications to constrain contemporary marine processes (GEOSECS II), at a 2003 Goldschmidt meeting convened in Japan. The GEOSECS II acronym referred to the Geochemical Ocean Section Studies program of the 1970s, but the program was subsequently named Geotraces. An April 2003 workshop in Toulouse, France, supported by the NSF--'s Chemical Oceanography Program, the CNRS, the Observatoire Midi-Pyrenees and the Universite Paul Sabatier, led to a successful proposal to form a SCOR working group (<a href="http://www.jhu.edu/scor/GEOTRACES.PDF">http://www.jhu.edu/scor/GEOTRACES.PDF</a>). </p> <p>Discussions among members of the SCOR Working Group led to formation of the GEOTRACES program, with a focus on international study of the global marine biogeochemical cycles of trace elements and their isotopes. Its mission is:</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>To identify processes and quantify fluxes that control the distributions of key trace elements and isotopes in the ocean, and to establish the sensitivity of these distributions to changing environmental conditions. </strong></span></p> <p>The GEOTRACES mission can be expressed as three overriding goals:</p> <blockquote> <p>--¢ To determine full water column distributions of selected trace elements and isotopes, including their concentration, chemical speciation, and physical form, along a sufficient number of sections in each ocean basin to establish the principal relationships between these distributions and with more traditional hydrographic parameters;</p> <p>--¢ To evaluate the sources, sinks, and internal cycling of these species and thereby characterize more completely the physical, chemical and biological processes regulating their distributions, and the sensitivity of these processes to global change; and</p> <p>--¢ To understand the processes that control the concentrations of geochemical species used for proxies of the past environment, both in the water column and in the substrates that reflect the water column.</p> </blockquote> <p>GEOTRACES will be global in scope, consisting of ocean sections complemented by regional process studies. Sections and process studies will combine fieldwork, laboratory experiments and modelling. Beyond realizing the scientific objectives identified above, a natural outcome of this work will be to build a community of marine scientists who understand the processes regulating trace element cycles sufficiently well to exploit this knowledge reliably in future interdisciplinary studies.</p> http://www.geotraces.org/ http://bco-dmo.org/files/bcodmo/images/logos/logo_GEOTRACES.jpg 2003-01-01T00:00:01