Scientific Program
The Scientific Steering Committee of U.S. GLOBEC has prepared a longŠterm
program to address these scientific objectives (Table 1, Table 2). This
document focuses on the next ten years. Field process studies at
several sites in the world ocean are planned for intensive activity in
the next ten years-several are in advanced planning stages (the
California Current System, and the Southern Ocean) and one (the
Northwest Atlantic) has already begun. All emphasize the advancement of
coupled biological-physical modeling in the sea, and the analysis of
underutilized historical data resources that oceanographers,
climatologists and fisheries scientists have collected over the last
century. The integration of these historical data into the contemporary
regional and global scale data collection efforts of U.S. GLOBEC
investigators (as well as those from other programs) is considered to be
critical. Further, U.S. GLOBEC is committed to the intercomparison of
the results of coupled biological-physical investigations among the
several sites where U.S. GLOBEC process studies occur. It is
anticipated that this intercomparison endeavor will be extended to
regions other than those where U.S. GLOBEC data collection efforts are
focused, and both the modeling and historical data analysis activities
will include a strong comparative perspective. Integrated instrument
systems which meet the needs of coupled biological-physical measurement
programs are crucial elements of all U.S. GLOBEC field studies. Design
of field studies in U.S. GLOBEC will consider the special data
requirements that coupled biophysical models demand.
Eventually, the data and scientific insights which arise from this
10-year study will ground the ecosystem monitoring program needed to
predict variability in living marine resources. Accurate near-term
forecasting of several important ecosystem properties (e.g.,
stratification, chlorophyll concentration, perhaps zooplankton biomass)
in the sea is feasible and can become an integrated component of
operational monitoring. The need is clear-e.g., commercial fishing
interests routinely request information on the location of fronts to
direct their fishing effort. Moreover, with such a system, decisions
about harvesting policy for living marine resources will be better
informed, perhaps to the benefit of both the marine resources and the
industries dependent upon them. Our vision is that a program of limited
ecological prediction-analogous to early efforts at weather
forecasting-is feasible, but demands the advances in knowledge and
methodology that we anticipate achieving in U.S. GLOBEC. It can only be
accomplished through the coupled use of operational biophysical models,
supplemented by the judicious injection of standard monitoring data
appropriately assimilated into the models.