Year 1

The data sets from the individual process studies and from the interdisciplinary broad scale activities will be analyzed to address the phase-specific hypotheses and questions put forth in the Implementation Plan (see GLOBEC Report 6, p. 24-41). While each physical process was the focus for one year of process studies, information about that process was collected – by design or inadvertently – each year, in the broad scale studies and in the other process studies. The focused workshops will allow all information about each physical process, and the biological processes associated with it, to be brought together. The Broad Scale workshop will combine five years of observations from shipboard surveys, moored instrumentation, drifters and satellite imagery to quantify the characteristic physical/biological patterns and the bio/physical and trophic relationships evident on the bank. Major events captured in the observational record that represent deviations from the characteristic patterns also will be documented. Knowledge of these patterns and major events will help guide the synthesis activities in years two and three. Coupled physical/biological modeling is expected to play an important role in the analyses at each of these workshops.