Edited By Peter H. Wiebe and Robert C. Groman
This workshop was organized by the U.S. GLOBEC Georges Bank Program Executive Committee¹. The scientific investigators who attended the workshop provided the abstracts and figures for this report. Peter Wiebe, Bob Groman and Chip Clancy put this report together. A special thanks to the National Academy Staff at the Woods Hole Facility for providing wonderful logistical support for the meeting.
The U.S. GLOBEC Georges Bank Scientific Investigators' Workshop and this report were sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Narrative
Opening Lecture (David Townsend)
Summaries of Discussion
Sessions and Breakout Groups
Titles and Abstracts of Presentations
Titles and Abstracts of Posters
Appendix I. Agenda
Appendix II. List of Participants
The U.S. GLOBEC Northwest Atlantic Georges Bank Program, a large multi-disciplinary multi-year oceanographic effort, officially began field work in the spring of 1994. Since that time, the GLOBEC program has had a continuous presence on the Bank with a series of cruises (which number more than 100), moorings, and satellite reconnaissance which ended with a final cruise to the Gulf of Maine in December 1999. A principal goal of the program has been to understand the population dynamics of target species on the Bank - cod and haddock, and the copepods, Calanus finmarchicus and Pseudocalanus spp. - in terms of their coupling to the physical environment and their predators and prey. This effort, which involves the integration of the field and experimental information into prognostic and diagnostic models of the physics and biology, is aimed at ultimately being able to predict changes in the distribution and abundance of these species as a result of changes in their biotic and physical environment and to anticipate how their populations will respond to climate change. The U.S. GLOBEC research program is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation-Division of Ocean Sciences, and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-Office of Global Programs and National Marine Fisheries Service, and is a component of the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
This U. S. GLOBEC Georges Bank Program scientific investigators' workshop was held at the National Academy of Sciences Woods Hole Facility. The meeting goals were:
As usual, there were three mechanisms for communicating results employed during the meeting:
Discussion
Sessions and Breakout Groups
A blend of physics, biology, and modeling work was in each session. A total of 28 presentations were made over the 3 days of the workshop (See Appendix 1 for the agenda). The talks and posters covered a broad range of topics that included:
Source/Retention/Loss and Cross Frontal Exchange
Regional to Bank-scale Studies
Stratification
There were three main discussion sessions:
- Discussion of : the current status of achieving the overall program goals of understanding population dynamics of four target species and the next steps needed to reach a fundamental new understanding.
- Creation of working groups for particular "Hot Topics" and development of Phase IV AO.
- A possible LTER and what's required in way of measurements to keep an assimilative ecosystem/information system model of Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank going.
Kinds of measurements
This workshop report is a compilation of the abstracts of the
presentations or posters (prepared by the presenters) and the three
discussion summaries (prepared by the discussion Chairmen and the
rapporteurs). This report will provide other scientists and
managers, who have a direct interest in these research activities,
with an overview of the results of this meeting. The summaries of the
discussions, and abstracts of the presentations and posters follow the
"Narrative" section, below.
Narrative
The workshop began on Monday, 8 November 1999, a crisp, clear, fall morning. The talks (presented in the Carriage house) began after a continental breakfast hosted at the site. Opening remarks by Peter Wiebe described the objectives and goals of the workshop, reviewed the agenda and structure of the workshop, and presented some ideas about possible products resulting from activities at the workshop. Participants were encouraged to think about the targeting of upcoming scientific meetings that could be used as forums to present the results of the workshop and new findings resulting from this research program. Three meetings were described as appropriate forums to keep in mind:
AGU/ASLO Ocean Science Meeting, January 2000, San Antonio, TX
ASLO Science Meeting, June 2000, Copenhagen, Denmark
ICES Annual Scientific Meeting, September 2000, Rouge, Belgium
This was followed by an opening lecture by David Townsend which focused on a research program carried on the Japanese Sardine that offered insight into what we might expect to learn as we begin to focus on our future synthesis effort. A series of 15 minute talks were presented during the last half of the morning and the first portion of the afternoon. A poster session preceded the afternoon break which was followed by additional talks which ended shortly after 1700 hours.
A reception and dinner was held in the Hackerman House beginning about 1800 and after dinner, the participants moved back to the Carriage House to listen to an evening lecture by Steve Morowski on the status of the Georges Bank and Gulf of Maine fish stocks.
On Day 2 (Tuesay), the meeting started with a plenary session (chaired by P. Wiebe) in which additional oral presentations were made. The second poster session took place following the morning break.
After lunch, the first discussion session took place lead by C. Miller. The review of the current status showed that remarkable progress had taken place since the beginning of the program, but that much synthesis remained to be done to reach the program goals. Following the afternoon break, several more oral presentations were made. The last was a description of a new kriging program that has been developed by D. Chu to assist program science investigators analyze and display their data.
After the talks, several groups assembled in breakout rooms to discuss scientific issues of mutual interest. One involved the relationship between measurements made during the GLOBEC years and the longer term events taking place in the Northwestern Atlantic and other parts of the North Atlantic associated with the NAO.
A second very nice buffet dinner was provided by the National Academy staff beginning about 1800 after which the physical oceanographers got together to discuss topics which were now of primary interest to the group. They were joined by a number of biologists who were interested in hearing the discussions.
The third day (Wednesday) began with the first of two discussion sections. B. Beardsley lead off by summarizing the results of the previous nights discussion. A number of "hot topics" were the focus of discussion and were clearly relevant to the tasks associated with the integration and synthesis of data which is envisioned to take place in Phase IV of the program.
Following the break, L. Incze lead the group in thinking about how future work in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank region might be organized. The need for Long-Term Ecosystem Research (LTER) to provide a base of information for regional assimilative modeling provided the main focus of the discussions.
The afternoon of the third day began in plenary session to continue elements of the morning discussions. Smaller groups formed breakout groups to continue planning for analyses of data and data synthesis.
The meeting ended about 1700 on 10 November 1999.