U.S.-GLOBEC: NEP Phase IIIb-CGOA: US GLOBEC Northeast Pacific Coordinating and Synthesis Office
H. Batchelder [Oregon State University] E. Casillas [NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center]

Project Summary

Proposed Activity and Intellectual Merit - This proposal seeks funds to continue a U.S. GLOBEC Northeast Pacific (NEP) coordinating office for an additional three years (through March 2009). The NEP office is responsible for coordinating the many, diverse research activities that have occurred in the California Current System (CCS) and Coastal Gulf of Alaska (CGOA) and that will see their findings come to fruition during the NEP-CCS and NEP-CGOA synthesis phases.

The role of the NEP Coordinating Office in facilitating synthesis is four-fold: Coordination, Liaison, Data and Information Management, and Outreach. In fulfilling these roles, the coordinating office will 1) provide regional administrative support and leadership to the NEP program, 2) with the NEP executive committee (NEPEXCO) and agency and other regional representatives, prepare future synthesis AO's, 3) with the U.S. GLOBEC National Data Management Office provide regional support for management, sharing and access to NEP data and model products, 4) provide coordination among GLOBEC NEP synthesis projects, 5) build collaborations between U.S. GLOBEC synthesis efforts in the NEP and the scientific programs and synthesis activities of other national (e.g. EVOS-GEM; various OOS's) and international (PICES-CCCC; GLOBEC International) programs in the Pacific, 6) facilitate outreach activities at local and regional levels (leaving most national and international outreach to the US National Office), and 7) provide a mechanism for communication and transfer of US GLOBEC NEP synthesis findings and products to resource management agencies, so that ocean conditions can appropriately be considered in future ecosystem based management for marine fisheries. All of these activities are needed to ensure a successful synthesis phase of the US GLOBEC NEP program.

Broader Impacts - The NEP has numerous fisheries resources (salmon, crab, rockfish, etc.), some of which are depressed from over-exploitation or as a result of poorly understood connections with larger-scale processes like climate change. The US GLOBEC Northeast Pacific program is the major US funded research program investigating the linkages between basin-scale, lower-frequency climate forcing, and its potential cascading effects to shorter temporal (seasonal to interannual) and smaller spatial (local to regional) scales on these fisheries resources and the underlying physical processes and biological productivity that support them. Understanding the complex and nonlinear physical, chemical and biological processes that are involved in the climate-to-fish connections is clearly important for evaluating future resource management options and uses. The true measure of the success of the US GLOBEC NEP program will be determined by how successful the Synthesis Phases of the program are, for it is through synthesis that the understanding needed to produce indices of ecosystem status and to develop predictive models of climate variability impacts will occur. The NEP Coordinating office will provide the framework-ensuring data access, opportunities for interactions, general coordination-within which synthesis can occur. Moreover, the results of the synthesis phase will provide guidance for future ocean observing systems in the NEP. Results of the synthesis phase will be disseminated through web sites, publications, presentations, and through other written media (GLOBEC International and PICES newsletters, etc.). These results will also be incorporated into educational materials, such as high school curricular material presently being developed by the OSU Science and Math Investigative Learning Experiences (or SMILE) program, which encourages minority and rural youths to pursue careers in science.

NSF Award Summary

None available.

This page was last updated on March 14, 2007.

Maintained by:
Hal Batchelder
College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331-5503
phone: 541-737-4500; FAX 541-737-2064