Minutes of the ExCo Meeting

October 5, 2000

Smith Conference Room, WHOI

Attending: Peter Wiebe, Greg Lough, Ted Durbin, Dan Lynch, Karin Ashjian, Diane Gifford, David Mountain, Bob Groman, Bob Beardsley, and Larry Madin

The meeting began at 10:15. Peter introduced the agenda:

Report on the Euro2000 meeting and the ICES Annual Science Conference

Review the mini-workshops

Discuss Phase IV

Preparations for the national Scientific Steering Committee

An additional item concerning a summary article for EOS was added to the agenda.

Euro2000 Meeting

At the TASC meeting in August 1999, Peter was asked to give a session summary. In it he suggested that a synthesis was needed of the various programs being conducted across the North Atlantic. The synthesis activity should include researchers from both sides of the Atlantic. Klaus-Günther Barthel of the EU picked up on this idea as a challenge and agreed to work toward it.

At EurOcean2000, which took place in late August in Hamburg, Peter gave the keynote talk and again hit on the need for integration across the Atlantic of the results from the various GLOBEC programs that have now completed their field work. Key to this integration would be coupled basin-scale bio-physical models connecting across the whole North Atlantic. To facilitate this, a bureaucratic mechanism is needed to enable the EU, US, and Canada to make a single call for proposals, and allow joint evaluation of the proposals and joint funding of researchers from all of the countries involved. While such a mechanism hasn’t been established before in marine science, there are precedents in other disciplines.

At the ICES meeting in Belgium, Peter and a small group (primarily Kurt Tande, Roger Harris, Ken Drinkwater, Cisco Werner, and Keith Brander) developed a draft AO to support this pan-Atlantic synthesis effort. The EU and NSF have informally reacted positively to the idea. Hopefully, this effort can be used as leverage to gain support for inclusion of funding for NOAA and the Canadian GLOBEC researchers.

Peter suggested that the next step would be to have a meeting of PIs from both sides of the North Atlantic. Carin suggested that before a meeting is held, a list of who did what in the various programs should be developed and made available.

The timing of this effort would have to be coordinated to some extent with our Phase IV synthesis effort. A number of issues covering various concerns, benefits, and approaches were discussed. Peter will discuss this at the SSC meeting next week.

Review of the Mini Workshops

Peter showed a list of the nine GLOBEC mini-workshops/meetings that have been or will be held. Reports are available from some and soon should be available from all that have been held so far. The web based report prepared by Craig Lee for the George Bank-Slope Water interactions workshop was identified as being particularly good. A link to it is on the Georges Bank GLOBEC home page.

The committee then considered what additional workshops should be planned over the next year.

As a follow-on to the kriging workshop held last spring, a workshop should be held covering kriging and other techniques to map data. Major topics would include:

- standard maps

- interpolation techniques

- recommendations for mapping data

In preparation for this workshop, a working group should be formed and address a number issues:

- work out new methods for mapping broad scale and process spatial data

- investigate the spatial statistics of the biological fields for various data types

SEASOAR

VPR

Greene Bomber acoustics/fluorometer

Lough's small scale bongo grids

For all of the techniques considered, modeling of the error will be an important. The working group to take on this charge will be made up of the Mapping Group formed at the Broad Scale Data Coordination workshop (J. Quinlan, P. Wiebe, D. Mountain, D. Chu, D. Lynch, and D. McGillicuddy) and some additional investigators, recommended to be J. Barth, C. Lee, C. Ashjian. J. Ledwell, and A. Solow. Dennis McGillicuddy was suggested to be the lead for the work group. An initial meeting of the group should happen between Nov. 10-20.

A second mini-workshop was suggested for a meeting of physical oceanographers and modelers. A companion session of biologists and the modelers was suggested to held, as well. From the modeling side, this will need to include the Canadian modelers, P. Franks and C. Chen, and D. Lynch et al. The general issues to be addressed would be to consider what is known about the physical and biological processes from observational programs and how well these are represented in the models. Some preliminary discussion for planning this workshop will take place at the Scotian Shelf/Frontal Exchange workshop next week. The workshop could be structured with one day dedicated to the physics and one to the biological considerations. The likely time for this would be in March.

Other topics suggested for workshops were:

Gulf of Maine Influences on Georges Bank

NAO influences on the Georges Bank system

In addition, the initial Broad-Scale Data Coordination workshop recommended having another meeting before the proposals for Phase IV are developed, probably in February or March.

EOS Article on Program Findings

Peter suggested that an article summarizing the program and our findings thus far should be written by the ExCo for EOS or a similar outlet. He will put together an introduction and outline and ask for the appropriate persons fill out the various sections.

Phase IV Planning

The AO for Phase IV is making its way through the approval process in Washington. The tentative date for proposals to be due is May 1, 2001, as of now. The funding target is $2kk per year for a four-year period. This could support about 20 PIs, in rough numbers, for modest participation in a synthesis effort. The NOAA PIs will not require salary support, so the number of PI equivalents would be a little higher - but still much smaller than number of PIs through the life of the program. The only way to get more support into this phase of the program would likely be by having a large number of outstanding proposals.

The committee considered what samples/data that were collected during earlier phases of the program might not be processed in time to be ready for the synthesis. Phase IV funding likely would support sample processing only if a strong case could be made for its importance to the synthesis effort. A quick run through the data sets the committee members were familiar with indicated:

The Broad Scale ichthyo and zoo sample processing for the target species will be completed.

There is a lot of VPR data that will not have been processed/analyzed.

There are some zoo samples from the Gulf of Maine cruises that will not have been processed.

There may be some nutrient samples from 1995 that are yet to be processed.

Scott Gallager has micorzooplankton samples that may not be processed.

Greg Lough hopes to have ichtyho sorting done from all 5 cruises in 1999. The zooplankton from all of his bongo grids (1995, 1997, 1999) will not have been done, but would be of interest.

A request will be sent to ggball to identify what samples or parts of their work will not be completed by the end of Phase III that could be important to Phase IV analyses.

Preparation for the Scientific Steering Committee Meeting

Peter, Bob and Greg will make a presentation about the program’s progress at the national GLOBEC Scientific Steering Committee meeting next week. They will work together on this, and would welcome any input from the rest of the PI’s in the program.

The meeting adjourned a 2:15.