Research focus: Budgets of biogenic elements in the NW Atlantic Ocean Margin
To reduce major uncertainties in predicting future global environmental quality, it is imperative to understand the sources and sinks of atmospheric CO2, the role of anthropogenic activities in disrupting the natural carbon cycle, and the effects of, and feedbacks between, these activities and the natural carbon cycle. Within the oceans, the ocean margin carbon cycle will be the most impacted. The U.S. Department of Energy designed and implemented a field study called the Ocean Margins Program (OMP) to examine carbon cycling in the continental margin of the western North Atlantic Ocean. The central objectives of the OMP are
This field program resulted in the most extensive, multidisciplinary set of water column and seabed observations ever obtained over an ocean margin. However, the DOE has terminated its marine research programs prior to the planned synthesis of the OMP. In the absence of an integrated, funded, and organized data analysis, this $50M investment in ocean margin carbon fluxes will be lost, which would be especially unfortunate since a salient element missing in the presently funded JGOFS SMP is input from ocean margins and rivers (Synopsis of the U.S. JGOFS SMP PI meeting, Boulder, May 20-22, 1998). Here, we propose to complete the original OMP objectives and facilitate the incorporation of the resulting database into the analyses of the various complementary JGOFS programs. The OMP dataset specifically addresses all of the major SMP goals, complements the JGOFS oceanic databases, and thus is highly relevant to SMP programmatic goals.
Verity, P., Repeta, D. J., Pietrafesa, L. (2003) Niskin bottle and CTD profile data from ACE, OMP, SEEP-I and SEEP-II studies in the NW Atlantic Ocean Margin between 1997 and 1988 (U.S. JGOFS Synthesis & Modeling Phase project results). Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO). (Version 16 September 2003) Version Date 2003-09-16 [if applicable, indicate subset used]. http://lod.bco-dmo.org/id/dataset/3176 [access date]
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