Attending: Peter Wiebe, Greg Lough, Ted Durbin, Scott Gallager, Larry Madin, Jim Bisagni, Bob Beardsley, David Mountain, with Donna Busch and Bob Groman.
The agenda, with five items, was reviewed:
Peter added an additional item - a report by Bob Beardsley and Greg Lough about the GLOBEC Scientific Steering Committee Meeting, held last month.
1. Priority of Broad Scale Station 40
Ted Durbin had submitted this item. He was concerned that station 40 has been missed a number of times and recommends that it be given a higher priority. Discussion indicated that a primary reason for dropping station 40 has been that it requires considerably more time to accomplish than the shallower stations on the Bank - and if behind schedule and given a time deadline, station 40 is the most logical to drop. Ted said that his main concern was the need for zooplankton information from that station to indicate the conditions coming onto the Bank from the Gulf of Maine. E-mails were received from David Townsend and Charlie Miller, who both stressed the importance of station 40 in providing boundary information. It was decided that chief scientists should consider accomplishing at least the zooplankton portion of the MOC-1 tow, and a CTD cast, even if time would not allow the full schedule of sampling operations be completed.
2. National Scientific Steering Committee Meeting
Greg Lough and Bob Beardsley attended the GLOBEC Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) meeting in Washington, D.C. in April. Presentations were made about other US GLOBEC activities, as well as one by Greg and Bob about the status of the Georges Bank program. The program managers discussed the budget and future of the various GLOBEC activities. A new AO will be forthcoming this fall for process oriented work and monitoring in the west coast program in 2000. The specific focus of the process studies is still under discussion, with the intent/hope of cooperating with the CoOP program, which will be in the field at the same time. The whole national GLOBEC program anticipates about $8k/yr for the next 3 years.
Bob Beardsley mentioned that a new SSC member is Nate Mantua, a climatologist, who is has worked on ENSO variability and has expressed interest in working on NAO and fisheries variability questions. This may be a good collaboration for the Georges Bank program.
The Program Managers indicated that notification of Phase III proposals would be coming shortly (see below). About two thirds will be funded at some level and one third will be rejected.
The internal review of the GLOBEC program, led by John Knauss, was discussed at the SSC meeting. It was very complimentary to the Georges Bank program. Some concern was raised as to whether the program would really address climate change, defined as changes associated with increases in green house gases, or only climate variability. A recommendation was made in the report to modify the GLOBEC program's overall goals statements accordingly. The report likely will be available through the GLOBEC web page.
3. Phase III Funding Time Table
The program managers indicated at the SSC meeting that notifications about Phase III proposals would be coming soon - and in fact some calls were received just before the ExCo meeting began. They also indicated that about two thirds of the proposals submitted had been accepted for funding and about one third rejected.
4. Scientific Investigator's Data Workshop
The workshop is scheduled for September 8-15 at the University of New Hampshire. Discussion on the workshop's agenda began with how to structure the workshop. In addition to the data analysis/presentation activities, Peter expressed the importance of the workshop producing reports on:
Then the following topic areas were identified for Data Analysis/Synthesis sessions at the workshop:
It was felt that work on the first two should be quite far along, while for the third and fourth, investigators will be at more initial stages in their analyses. It was also felt that investigators from the NOAA/COP Predator/Prey program should be invited to attend the workshop. In addition to the above sessions, three mechanisms for communicating results were identified:
The initial schedule of events - as identified so far - is (beginning on Tuesday, September 8):
T afternoon setup/evening session to review agenda, meeting
objectives,Phase III funding and DSR overview
W (AM) finish from T PM and review white paper topics
Th
F
S
S
M cruise planning session (r day)
T DSR review
W data management discussions
To be determined:
Input will be requested from all of the investigators concerning what the topic areas should be for the working group sessions and for the lecture series.
5. Data Management
Bob Groman pointed out that having the ability of comparing different data sets through the GLOBEC data management system has been identified as an important, desired development for the system. To do this requires a mechanism to deal with an object of objects (in object-oriented-programming nomenclature - since each data set is an object). The capability to do this has been developed and is now being tested. For testing real-world situations, Bob requested specific examples of objects (data sets) that could be desirable to bring together to test how this all works.
6. Visit by Congressman Sam Farr (CA)
Congressman Sam Farr joined the meeting after giving a talk to the Woods Hole community in the Redfield auditorium. Congressman Delahunt (MA) was unable to attend due to illness. A member of Delahunt's staff attended, as did Bob Gagosian (Director of WHOI) and Mike Sissenwine (Director of the NMFS Northeast Science Center). Peter Wiebe gave a brief overview of the GLOBEC program. The Congressman asked a number of questions, concerning the link of GLOBEC to the commercial fisheries, interactions with researchers on the west coast (i.e., NMFS Pacific Fisheries Environmental Group which is in his district), showed interest in outreach efforts to involve society in oceanography - an oceanography program within the Boy Scouts by Scott Gallager and an NOPP effort described by Peter Wiebe to involve fishermen in the collection of oceanographic data.
The meeting adjourned at 3:30.