A meeting was held on 14 March to begin the planning for an open meeting of prospective U.S. GLOBEC Georges Bank Program Phase IV investigators. Attending the meeting were: Mike Fogarty, David Mountain, Jim Bisagni, Ted Durbin, Bob Beardsley, and Peter Wiebe. The discussion centered on the goals of the meeting and Phase IV in general, and to prepare a draft outline of the Open Meeting Agenda.

Ultimate Synthesis Goal: to explain the dynamics of the target species during the GLOBEC years of study on Georges Bank and to relate this to patterns of distribution and abundance both in the past and in the future.

There are two contextual frameworks in which the synthesis work should be viewed. The first comes from Figure 3 of Report #6 "Northwest Atlantic Implementation Plan" (June 1992) which is a schematic illustration of factors affecting population biomass.

The second involves the relationship between the various components of the program's field process, broad-scale, and process work, and the modeling element.

Synthesis proposals should strive to be relevant within the contextual frame work implied by these two figures.

In the discussion, it was suggested that in the preparation of proposals, it would be useful for each proposal to present a 4-year time line with proposers saying when information will be available i.e. what tasks need to be done and when.

Draft agenda for the meeting.

0900 Phase IV AO reviewed and the purpose of the meeting articulated (P. Wiebe)

0930 Workshop Reports/Status of current synthesis efforts.

• Broad-scale (D. Mountain).
• Slope Water/shelf interactions (C. Lee and C. Ashjian).
• Cross-frontal exchange (K. Wishner and J. Ledwell).
• Scotian Shelf cross-overs to Georges Bank (P. Smith and J. Bisagni)
• Vital rates
• Zooplankton (D. Gifford and D. McGillicuddy)
• Fish (G. Lough/ C. Werner/ D. Lynch

1200-1300 Lunch

1300: Synthesis Theme Talks.

• 1) Chronology - Physics and Biology ( D. Mountain and T. Durbin)
• 2) Upstream influence on the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank ( P. Smith, C. Greene, and D. Townsend)
• 3) Interannual variability on Georges Bank (typing long term changes to the GLOBEC study on the Bank focusing on variation in time and space)

• Improved dynamical understanding - A model development critique (beyond NPZ).
• Integration and calibration of various biological and physical data collection systems.
• Models as a synthesizing tool
• Dynamical model development/calibration ( C. Chen and K. Brink)
• Biological model development (P. Franks and C. Chen; Werner et al.)
• Data assimilation - hindcasting/forecasting (P. Smith, D. Lynch, D. McGillicuddy) [Contrast weather/climate analogy]

1600: Organize into breakout groups. Work in evening after dinner.

Day two:

0830: Reports of breakout group status.

0900-1200: continued work in breakout groups.

1200-1300 Lunch

1300: Final reports of breakout groups.