Plan for the Phase IV Synthesis of the
GLOBEC Georges Bank Program
Phase IV of the US GLOBEC Georges Bank
program will synthesize the results from the programs earlier
phases to provide an integrated understanding of the population
dynamics of key, target species and evaluate how a varying climate
may influence these populations. Following the programs
Implementation Plan (GLOBEC Report 6, http://www.usglobec.org/), each
earlier phase focused field studies on a particular physical process
and the influence of that process on the banks biology: Phase
I - stratification, Phase II - source/retention/loss of water and
organisms from the Bank, Phase III - cross frontal exchange.
Bank-scale survey and moored sampling was conducted each year of the
program to provide time series of the physical conditions and of the
distribution/abundance of the biological populations on the bank. In
addition a modeling component has been supported throughout the
program to develop models for investigating the banks
bio/physical dynamics and to provide a rigorous framework for
synthesizing the results from the program.
Synthesis of the large amount of data
collected will be done in incremental steps (by necessity and by
logic). Different groups of researchers likely will need to
collaborate at different stages of the synthesis. This plan presents
a structure and a timeline to guide synthesis activities and to
provide opportunities for researchers to collaborate for achieving
the specific objectives as the synthesis activities progress.
Each year a series of related workshops
will be held to focus on a particular step in the synthesis. Each
workshop will focus on a specific topic with a set of specific
objectives. At the end of each year a symposium will be held to
present the products of these integrated analyses. The last year of
the synthesis will be dedicated to the production of book that will
present the overall results of the program and address the original
programmatic goals articulated in the Implementation Plan. The
workshops are expected to last 2-3 days and the symposia, 3-5 days.