Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry Scoping Workshops

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https://hdl.handle.net/1912/6059

The OCB Project Office provides support for focused scoping workshops that target specific OCB research priorities, providing a public venue for members of the research community to discuss research challenges and implementation approaches.

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Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
  • Other
    Sea Change: Charting the course for ecological and biogeochemical ocean time series research
    (OCB Project Office, 2010-09)
    Time series are an essential tool for detecting the complex interactions among climate forcing, ecosystem structure and biogeochemical cycling. To date, there are relatively few sites around the world where detailed, high quality, interdisciplinary time series measurements of ocean biogeochemistry are long enough to begin to differentiate longer term climate trends from higher frequency dynamics, such as event to seasonal scale processes.
  • Other
    New Frontiers in Southern Ocean Biogeochemistry and Ecosystem Research
    (OCB Project Office, 2009-06)
    This Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry (OCB) scoping workshop in Princeton, New Jersey, will focus on carbon cycling and marine ecosystems in the context of climate variability in the Southern Ocean. The Southern Ocean plays a critical role in the global climate system owing to its unique physical, biogeochemical, and ecological features. The region is undergoing substantial changes in response to climate trends and variability, and future changes are expected to exert substantial impacts on biogeochemical cycles and ecosystem processes of the Antarctic. Despite increased efforts to understand these processes, significant discrepancies still exist between models and observations, and a number of key processes remain poorly quantified. There is a clear and increasing need to develop a coordinated approach that advances our understanding of climate variability in the Southern Ocean and its implications for ecosystem dynamics and biogeochemical cycling. The overall objective of this Scoping Workshop will be to facilitate interaction between the physical, biogeochemical, and ecosystem research communities to develop research strategies to resolve current limitations, gaps and discrepancies in our understanding and prediction of the Southern Ocean ecosystems, biogeochemical cycles and carbon uptake.
  • Other
    Global biogeochemical fluxes program for the Ocean Observatories Initiative
    (OCB Project Office, 2011-05)
    This OCB Scoping Workshop will explore the potential for development of a major, sustained biogeochemical flux program aligned with the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). The primary focus of this workshop will be to (a) define overarching scientific objectives, (b) establish core measurement strategies/technologies and assess the logistical feasibility of biogeochemical observations, and (c) explore ways to maximize synergy with the OOI in terms of utilization of physical and virtual assets (cyberinfrastructure), to strengthen the overall OOI mission, and enhance the scientific and societal value of this major oceanographic research effort. The outcome of the workshop will be a report that we envision will form the foundation for a community white paper. The latter will provide strong justification for a global biogeochemical flux component of the Ocean Observatories Initiative (GBF-OOI), describe its scientific goals, and articulate how such a program could be realized.
  • Other
    Observing biogeochemical cycles at global scales with profiling floats and gliders
    (OCB Project Office, 2009-04)
    This Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry (OCB) Scoping Workshop focused on the implementation of a long-term observing system for marine biogeochemistry using chemical and biological sensors deployed on autonomous platforms, such as profiling floats, gliders or other long-endurance autonomous vehicles. Several chemical and biological sensors can now be deployed for months to years in the ocean on floats and gliders. These systems are becoming sufficiently affordable that it is possible to envision biogeochemical sensor networks with hundreds of nodes or more, similar to the current Argo network of 3000 floats. This will allow the development of basin-scale and, ultimately, global-scale observing systems. These sensor networks will permit ocean scientists to quantitatively observe fundamental biogeochemical processes such as rates of nutrient supply, net community production, physical controls on bloom development (e.g. the Sverdrup Hypothesis), dynamics of oxygen minimum zones and their impacts on denitrification, and carbon export throughout the ocean with a level of detail hitherto impossible. The spatial and temporal responses of these processes to climate oscillations and greenhouse gas forcing will be observed with a resolution that is simply not possible when observations are limited to ships. An integrated observing system that combines in situ sensors deployed on long endurance platforms with satellite sensors and data-assimilating, biogeochemical-ecological models would provide previously unachievable constraints on the carbon cycle and its sensitivity to a changing climate. It would transform ocean biogeochemistry. These capabilities are developing rapidly but they are not yet widely appreciated by the ocean science community. This Scoping Workshop had four specific goals: 1) to provide carbon cycle scientists with a critical review of currently existing technologies, their strengths, their weaknesses, and expected developments, 2) to identify problems that can only be solved with these types of observations over several years and to then discuss experiments that could be implemented in the near-term to address these topics, 3) to outline the requirements for a long-term observing system based on in situ sensors, satellites and data-assimilating models to monitor biogeochemical processes on a global scale, and 4) to identify factors limiting development of proven sensors and unmet technical developments required to expand our capability to an integrated observing system.
  • Other
    The molecular biology of biogeochemistry : using molecular methods to link ocean chemistry with biological activity
    (OCB Project Office, 2010-11)
    This workshop will convene molecular biologists and biogeochemists to determine what genomic and proteomic tools can be applied to important problems in the carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus cycles of the ocean through an understanding of how microbes and primary producers interact with their physical and chemical environment.
  • Other
    Terrestrial and coastal carbon fluxes in the Gulf of Mexico
    (OCB Project Office, 2008-05)
    The workshop goal was to bring together researchers from across multiple disciplines, including terrestrial, aquatic, and marine ecosystems, to discuss the state of knowledge of carbon fluxes, data gaps, and overarching questions in the Gulf of Mexico system. The workshop stimulated discussions on how best to design integrated studies of marine and terrestrial biogeochemical cycles and associated ecosystems that would improve understanding of the evolving role of the gulf in the carbon cycle in the face of environmental change.
  • Other
    Ocean acidification
    (OCB Project Office, 2007-10)
    The goal of this workshop was to bring together researchers to discuss potential ocean acidification research projects that support the OCB mission. We specifically wanted to move toward specific implementation strategies to address the many research gaps and unknowns about ocean acidification that have been identified in previous workshops.