Peter H. Wiebe and Robert C. Groman
The central tasks of the office will continue to be to:
The office will continue to assist in the development of new software specifications; the flow of information products and related programs into the system; the local data base maintenance, with special attention to the scientific users and data sources represented; and supporting the U.S. GLOBEC Georges Bank Executive Committee meetings. Over the course of the proposal, we anticipate that all the field and laboratory data will be ready for dissemination. Many will require new methods (programs) to interface to the JGOFS data management system and we will provide assistance to the data contributors in implementing their methods. There will be a concerted effort to enhance the analysis tools available via the Web (not funded by this proposal). We also anticipate that the data system will be expanded to support the other modules of the U.S. GLOBEC Program as they start their field efforts.
We will continue to collaborate with U.S. JGOFS Data Management Office on data management issues; this will involve sharing programs and ideas.
We will continue to hold yearly scientific investigator workshops to carry out the very essential collaborative activities of exchange of ideas, and integration and synthesis of the data. These workshops are viewed as absolutely necessary to enable the program to achieve its goals and objectives. A longer and intensive workshop is planned for the fall 1998 to provide an opportunity for the investigators to analyze, synthesize and summarize the Program's results to date. However, due to funding cutbacks, this office will only be able to provide modest funding for this conference.
We will only be able to provide modest cruise supplies. Replacement nets and other related cruise supplies required by the broad-scale cruises will not be provided due to budget cutbacks.
Hydrographic Data Processing
In the 1995 Georges Bank Study, approximately 800 CTD stations were made during the process-oriented and mooring cruises made aboard UNOLS vessels. Due to the limitations on scientific crew size on many of these cruises, most of the CTD stations were taken by graduate students and biological oceanographers, such that essentially no post-cast processing was done at sea. To ensure an edited and well calibrated CTD data set scientifically useful to all investigators in the program (and the community), D. Limeburner and R. Beardsley undertook the task of processing these CTD data into edited 1-db averaged profiles for each station for each cruise before submitting this data set to the Data Center. To do this post-cruise processing, Limeburner developed a set of software programs which work well with the different CTD systems used in 1995, and has developed a simple protocol for the processing, editing, and documentation of CTD data which we anticipate will be followed by other investigators. Limeburner is using salary support from his U.S. GLOBEC NSF Long-term Drifter Grant for this unbudgeted but essential task.
In addition to the above CTD work, many additional CTD and SeaCat profiles were collected on NOAA vessels during both process-oriented and broad-scale cruises in 1995, and underway hydrographic data were collected with the Video Plankton Recorder (VPR) and BIOMAPER on some 1995 cruises. While the primary responsibility for processing this data lies with the primary data takers, all of this data will ultimately reside at the Data Center for use by all investigators, so it is essential that all hydrographic data taken in the program be quality-controlled and cross-calibrated whenever possible to ensure maximum usefulness.
We estimate approximately 660 CTD stations will be made during 1997 and 1999 (mooring and the process cruise years), and 120 CTD stations in 1998 (mooring cruise year). This new data set will be combined with 700 CTD stations completed in 1995. F. Bahr and S. Zimmerman, with supervision from D. Limeburner, will undertake the task of processing as much of the new CTD data as funding and time permit. D. Mountain and J. Manning (NMFS) will continue to be responsible for post-processing the CTD data collected on the broad-scale surveys and a few process-oriented cruises conducted on either UNOLS or NOAA vessels.