About OCB

The newly formed Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry program will focus on the ocean’s role as a component of the global Earth system, bringing together research in geochemistry, ocean physics, and ecology that inform on and advance our understanding of ocean biogeochemistry. The overall program goals are to promote, plan, and coordinate collaborative, multidisciplinary research opportunities within the U.S. research community and with international partners. Important OCB-related activities currently include: the Ocean Carbon and Climate Change (OCCC) and the North American Carbon Program (NACP); U.S. contributions to IMBER, SOLAS, CARBOOCEAN; and numerous U.S. single-investigator and medium-size research projects funded by NASA, NOAA, and NSF.

The role of the Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry (OCB) Program is to promote, plan, and coordinate collaborative, multidisciplinary research opportunities within the U.S. and with international partners. OCB will support any project at the request of the PI(s) that falls within our broad scientific priorities; projects can be already underway or in the planning stage, and the scope can be from an individual scientist to multi-scientist teams. Support from OCB could include helping to publicize upcoming field opportunities, facilitate collaboration from different research teams, disseminate research findings, data sets and model products, and develop and share educational and public outreach material. OCB does not approve or endorse any particular research project---that is the role of the peer review process and the federal science agencies. Instead, OCB will make recommendations on research topics and priorities within the framework of ocean biogeochemistry and related ecological science. The OCB Project Office provides limited support for scoping workshops that target specific OCB research priorities, providing a public venue for members of the research community to discuss research challenges and implementation approaches. Please see the most recent scoping workshop solicitation for more information. PIs of funded scoping workshop proposals should consult the guidelines for planning OCB scoping workshops.

OCB Mission:  to establish the evolving role of the ocean in the global carbon cycle, in the face of environmental change, through studies of marine biogeochemical cycles and associated ecosystems

OCB Overarching Science Themes:
Improve understanding and prediction of:
1) oceanic uptake and release of atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases;
2) climate-sensitivities of biogeochemical cycles and interactions with ecosystem structure

OCB Currently Identified Priorities:
- Ocean acidification
- Terrestrial/coastal carbon fluxes and exchanges
- Climate sensitivities of and change in ecosystem structure and associated impacts on biogeochemical cycles
- Mesopelagic ecological and biogeochemical interactions
- Benthic-pelagic feedbacks on biogeochemical cycles
- Ocean carbon uptake and storage

The Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry Scientific Steering Committee (OCB-SSC) was formed in February 2006. The first eight members below also constitute the Ocean Carbon and Climate Change Scientific Steering Group (OCCC-SSG). The OCCC-SSG group was established by the U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Program with a specific charge to address coordination across the multi-agency U.S. ocean carbon effort. The OCB-SSC was created jointly by NSF, NASA and NOAA and will more broadly focus on marine biogeochemistry (including carbon) and a variety of ocean science research communities.

Our Scientific Steering Committee:

Scott Doney (WHOI) sdoney@whoi.edu (chair)
Bob Anderson (LDEO) boba@ldeo.columbia.edu
Mary-Elena Carr (ColumbiaU) mcarr@ei.columbia.edu
Richard Feely (NOAA/PMEL) richard.a.feely@noaa.gov
Burke Hales ( OSU) bhales@coas.oregonstate.edu
Dave Karl (U Hawaii) dkarl@hawaii.edu
Galen McKinley (U Wisconsin) gamckinley@wisc.edu
Chris Sabine (NOAA/PMEL) chris.sabine@noaa.gov

Ginger Armbrust (UW) armbrust@ocean.washington.edu
Kathy Barbeau (Scripps) kbarbeau@ucsd.edu
Debbie Bronk (VIMS) bronk@vims.edu
Joanie Kleypas (NCAR) kleypas@ucar.edu
Steve Lohrenz (USMississippi) steven.Lohrenz@usm.edu
Wade McGillis (LDEO) wrm2102@columbia.edu
Mark Ohman (Scripps) mohman@ucsd.edu
Tammi Richardson (USCarolina) richardson@biol.sc.edu

OCB Project Office:

Scott Doney, Executive Scientist, sdoney@whoi.edu
Heather Benway, Executive Officer, hbenway@whoi.edu
Mary Zawoysky, Administrative Associate, mzawoysky@whoi.edu

The OCB Project Office facilitates activities initiated, organized and coordinated by the OCB Scientific Steering Committee. Broadly speaking, these roles fall in to four categories: 1) Direct logistical support to the SSC for its meetings, production of reports and other SSC activities; 2) Facilitate and promote communication of these SSC activities to the national and international scientific community and broader audiences, and serve as a clearing house for information related to U.S. and international ocean carbon cycle science programs; 3) Organize community workshops, symposia, and, 4) Education and outreach activities, including promotion of ocean carbon science to broader audiences, policy makers, and underrepresented students.

Ocean Time-Series Advisory Committee:

OCB SSC member Debbie Bronk (VIMS, bronk@vims.edu) is the chair of the recently formed Ocean Time-Series Advisory Committee (OTSAC), which was charged with reviewing existing ocean biogeochemical time-series (e.g., HOT, BATS, CARIACO), developing recommendations to improve the effectiveness and inter-comparability of these time-series, and interfacing with the OCB research community to identify and communicate the needs for existing and future time-series sites.

The other members of OTSAC include Craig Carlson (UCSB, carlson@lifesci.ucsb.edu), Steve Emerson (UW, emerson@u.washington.edu), Ken Johnson (MBARI, johnson@mbari.org), Dennis McGillicuddy (WHOI, mcgillic@whoi.edu), and Chris Sabine (NOAA/PMEL, chris.sabine@noaa.gov).

At the end of August 2007, OTSAC distributed a questionnaire to PIs at the three ocean time-series under review (BATS, HOT, and CARIACO). The questionnaire was designed to 1) Collect information on a wide array of chemical, physical, and biological parameters that were currently being measured, as well as what was proposed in the 2007 renewal submissions to NSF; and 2) Identify the needs of the time-series sites. Based on the responses to the questionnaire, OTSAC members submitted an initial summary report to the OCB SSC. The report includes a tabular summary of measurements being made at each time-series site (HOT, BATS, CARIACO) as they relate to core measurements specified by the 1996 JGOFS Time-Series Oversight Committee. The report also highlights specific data inter-comparability issues among the three sites for future consideration.

As we await funding decisions on the time-series site proposals, OTSAC has identified the role of moorings at the time-series sites as a high-priority issue to pursue, and is planning to discuss this and several other big picture issues at the upcoming Ocean Sciences meeting in March. Please attend the special session on time-series at the 2008 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Orlando, Florida: Session 158 (3/7/08, W108): Time-series Observations of Biogeochemical Processes and Their Long Term Trends. The session will include a review of the time-series program and the goals of OTSAC, as well as an overview talk by the PI from each of the time-series sites in the morning. There will also be an Ocean Time-Series Town Hall Meeting on Friday 3/7 (12:00-13:30, W108) to discuss future needs and issues of the time-series program. In an ongoing effort to facilitate open discussion of time-series issues among members of the OCB research community, OTSAC will also set up and maintain a blog (details TBD).

Relationship to other Carbon Research Projects

Two efforts are underway to improve communication and to coordinate existing and new U.S. ocean biogeochemistry research programs. The first, Ocean Carbon and Climate Change (OCCC) was established in 2005 and focuses directly on the ocean carbon system and its interaction with the atmosphere and land carbon reservoirs. OCCC is part of the U.S. Global Change Research Program Interagency Partnership Carbon Cycle Science Program and is the marine counterpoint to the North American Carbon Program (NACP). Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry (OCB) was established in February 2006 by the NSF, NASA and NOAA and will focus more broadly on marine biogeochemistry (including carbon), ecology and the U.S. research communities involved in OCCC, SOLAS and IMBER. The OCB and OCCC have a joint Scientific Steering Committee (OCB-SSC), chaired by Scott Doney (sdoney@whoi.edu). The efforts of the two steering entities will be closely interrelated because the OCCC-SSG members are a sub-group of the OCB-SSC. An OCCC Implementation Strategy was published in 2004 (Doney et al., 2004) outlining a program of oceanic monitoring and research aimed at determining how much carbon dioxide is being taken up by the ocean at the present time and how climate change will affect the future behavior of the carbon sink.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

 

 

Home  |  Contact