European-North American GLOBEC Collaboration

The recent EurOcean2000 meeting in Hamburg, Germany had a session on August 30 entitled "GLOBEC related studies in the North Atlantic: A perspective for European/North American research cooperation?" Roger Harris (chairman of International GLOBEC) was the chairperson, Keith Brander (ICES GLOBEC coordinator) was the rapporteur, and Peter Wiebe, Mark Ohman, Ken Drinkwater, and Kurt Tande were the speakers. The morning session was attended by more than 50 scientists, industry representatives, and government representatives. Included in the latter were the organizer of the session Klaus-Günther (the European Commission), and Margaret Leinen and Mike Reeve (NSF).

Leading off the session was Roger Harris who provided an overview of the International Globec and the various North Atlantic initiatives. Peter Wiebe followed as a keynoter with a talk titled "Basin-wide studies of zooplankton through observation and modeling: Synthesis of North Atlantic GLOBEC data sets." Mark Ohman, as provocateur, talked about "How can we best advance the science using cooperative studies." Kurt Tande described "The legacy from TASC: Future scientific avenues and Implications." Ken Drinkwater talked on the theme of Canadian GLOBEC and related studies which tied in the ICES Cod and Climate efforts to the GLOBEC efforts. Proceedings of the conference will be produced with papers by each of the speakers and a rapporteur’s report containing a summary of the presentations and discussions.

It was recognized that there is a strong motivation on the part of individual scientists of different nationalities to work together during the coming synthesis phase of GLOBEC in the North Atlantic. To make this possible, there was consensus that there should be collaborative international workshops to facilitate exchanges of ideas and to build working partnerships among the scientists involved in or interested in conducting the synthesis research. There was also consensus that mechanisms need to be created to enable the funding of collaborative studies involving international multi-disciplinary teams of researchers.