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Scientific Background

The background materials are presented to stimulate discussion at the Open Science Conference. The conference is designed to gather community input to develop a new international research project, OCEANS.

1. Discussion Document for OCEANS Conference (download pdf file, 10 pages, 92 KB) – brief description of the scientific programme of the conference. Produced by IGBP/SCOR OCEANS Transition Team in 2002. This document is also presented below in html format.

2. Draft Framework Report for Future Research on Biological and Chemical Aspects of Global Change in the Ocean (download pdf file, 2,2 MB) – scientific background to aid the development of OCEANS. Produced by IGBP/SCOR in 2000-2002.

Your feedback on the above documents and the development of OCEANS is welcomed, particularly if you are unable to attend the meeting. Please include your name with your comments and send them by email to: scor@dmv.com. We specifically invite:

1. General comments on the focus and balance of the meeting and background materials.

2. Comments to contribute to working group discussions (please refer to the working group number). These will be passed to the Chair and Rapporteur of the relevant working group.

Introduction

The primary goal of OCEANS is to understand the sensitivity of the ocean to global change within the context of the broader Earth System, focusing on biogeochemical cycles*, marine food webs and their interactions. The overarching questions to seed discussion are:

  1. How does global change, represented by changes in natural climatic modalities and anthropogenic forcings, impact marine biogeochemical cycles and ecosystem dynamics?
  2. How do these impacts mechanistically alter the relationship between elemental cycling and ecosystem dynamics?
  3. What are the feedback mechanisms to the Earth System from these changes?

OCEANS will seek a comprehensive understanding of the impacts of climate and anthropogenic forcings on food web dynamics (i.e., structure, function, diversity, and stability) and elemental cycling (i.e., biogeochemical pathways, transfers, and cycling), including the impacts of underlying physical dynamics of the ocean. It will also strive for mechanistic and predictive understanding of how these linked systems respond to global change, resulting from natural climate modes (e.g., the El Niño-Southern Oscillation [ENSO] and the North Atlantic Oscillation [NAO]) and anthropogenic perturbations, and then feed back to climate, ocean physics, and marine resources (Fig. 1).

Some areas of the ocean are likely to be particularly sensitive to long-term changes and will be subject to intensive studies. These "hot spots" often occur in critical domains such as regions of upwelling and deep mixing, continental margins, high-latitude areas, the sediment-water interface, the mesopelagic layer and intermediate waters.



Figure 1: The scientific questions of OCEANS focus on the impacts of natural climatic and anthropogenic forcings on biogeochemical cycles and marine ecosystems (arrows 1), with particular focus on how these forcings alter the relationships between elemental cycles and ecosystems (arrows 2) and how these responses feed back to the Earth System (arrow 3).

* The definition of biogeochemistry used in this document is very broad, following Libes (1992). Biogeochemistry is defined as “the science that studies the biological, chemical and geological aspects of environmental processes.

Science Background for the Working Group Discussions

The following are the topics for the Working Group discussions at the Open Science Conference. Two successive sets of working groups will be conducted: The first set (Set A) will deal primarily with process issues while the second set (Set B) will tackle domains and cross-cutting issues.

Set A

1. Trace elements in ecological and biogeochemical processes
2. Physical forcing of biogeochemical cycling and marine food webs
3. Climatic modulation of organic matter fluxes
4. Direct effects of anthropogenic CO2 on biogeochemical cycles and ecosystems
5. Integrating food web dynamics from end to end

Set B

6. Continental margins
7. The mesopelagic layer
8. Biogeochemical hotspots, choke points, triggers, switches and non-linear responses
9. Feedbacks to the Earth System
10. Coupled models of biogeochemical cycles and ecosystems

Linkages with other projects and activities

Ocean research in IGBP II will be carried out by two closely integrated, collaborative projects, jointly sponsored by IGBP and SCOR. These are the already established Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics project (GLOBEC, also sponsored by IOC) and the new project under development, Ocean Biogeochemistry and Ecosystems Analysis (OCEANS). Ocean research within IGBP will also interface with atmospheric research (primarily through the Surface Ocean-Lower Atmosphere Study [SOLAS]) and with terrestrial research (via the Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone [LOICZ] project). Collaboration is being developed with other IGBP projects (eg. GAIM and PAGES), the WCRP, DIVERSITAS and human dimensions communities, including the IHDP and the IGBP-IHDP-WCRP Global Carbon Project. An integral tool for this research is palaeo-oceanography, including the reliable calibration of proxies for macro and micro-nutrients, productivity, plankton composition, temperature, and other physical changes.

References

A Draft Framework for Future Research on Biological and Chemical Aspects of Global Change in the Ocean: an IGBP/SCOR Collaboration(PDF 2,2 MB)
Libes, S. M., An introduction to marine biogeochemistry. New York : Wiley, c1992. xv, 734 p

List of acronyms

ACW Antarctic Circumpolar Wave
AO Arctic Oscillation
CLIVAR Climate Variability and Prediction project
DIVERSITAS An international programme of biodiversity science
ENSO El Niño-Southern Oscillation
GAIM Global Analysis, Integration and Modelling project
GLOBEC Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics project
GODAE Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment
IGBP International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme
IHDP International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change
IOC Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission
JGOFS Joint Global Ocean Flux Study
LOICZ Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone project
NAO North Atlantic Oscillation
PAGES Past Global Changes project
PDO Pacific Decadal Oscillation
SCOR Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research
SOLAS Surface Ocean – Lower Atmosphere Study
WCRP World Climate Research Programme