The annual OCB Summer Workshop will be held June 24-27 in Woods Hole, MA. See agenda, plenary sessions, documents and more on the workshop website.

Join our live stream during the workshop at www.whoi.edu/home/whoiBroadcast/livewhoi2_854.html. We will take questions or respond to any streaming issues via ocb_live@whoi.edu. First try reloading the live stream window if you lose the feed at any time.

Use and follow #OCB2019 on Twitter for workshop highlights.

• The OCB 2019 early career mixer will take place Sunday, June 23 at 6:30 pm at Grumpy’s Pub (29 Locust St., Falmouth) – RSVP to hbenway@whoi.edu by June 17 for pizza headcount.
• WHOI facility tours: Two tours of national WHOI facilities will be taking place on Monday, June 24 at 5:30 pm (at the beginning of the poster session on Quissett campus). These tours will each take ~30 minutes, so you will not miss too much of the poster session. Please contact Heather ASAP if interested, as tour size is limited and participation is first come, first served.
  1. National Ocean Sciences Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Facility (NOSAMS): As of now, there are still 4-5 spots remaining for this tour.  https://www.whoi.edu/nosams/home
  2. WHOI Laboratory for Ocean Sensors and Observing Systems (LOSOS): This is a newly added tour of the facility that houses WHOI’s Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) operations. The tour will include an OCB scientist sharing her insights and experiences incorporating OOI data into her research. https://www.whoi.edu/website/losos/home/

Submit your online poster (PDF) for the OCB 2019 online poster gallery by June 18 to ensure that it’s posted before the workshop starts.

2019 OCB Workshop Plenary Sessions

Anthropogenic changes in ocean oxygen: Coastal and open ocean perspectives (Monday)
Chairs: Julie Granger, Adam Martiny, Alyson Santoro, and Ben Twining
Session Description: Warming waters, shifting circulation and ventilation, and coastal eutrophication are driving changes in dissolved oxygen levels in the coastal and open oceans. These changes have impacts on carbon and nutrient biogeochemistry, as well as the health of pelagic and benthic communities. At the same time, naturally occurring seasonal and interannual variability in dissolved oxygen complicates discerning the magnitude and even the sign of long term trends. This session will explore changes in oxygen concentrations observed across a range of environments (coastal to open ocean), while considering a range of physical, biological, and anthropogenic drivers of these changes, as well as their impacts.
Speakers: Andreas Oschlies (GEOMAR), Matthew Long (NCAR), Samantha Siedlecki (Univ. Conn), Malcolm Scully (WHOI), Jerry Tjiputra (UniResearch, Norway), Mariona Claret (U. Washington), Jeremy Testa (UMCES), Marjy Friedrichs (VIMS)

Approaches and challenges to understanding biogeochemical cycling across the land-ocean aquatic continuum (Tuesday)
Chairs: Marjy Friedrichs, Eileen Hofmann, Raleigh Hood, and Maria Tzortziou
Session Description: Despite their small area, the network of rivers, estuaries, and continental shelf waters that comprise the land-ocean continuum are central to global biogeochemical cycling, which has significant implications for ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration. Changes in land use and the effects of climate change are altering biogeochemical cycling across this interlinked continuum, often with detrimental effects, manifested as hypoxia and coastal acidification, for example. The ability to predict outcomes resulting from these changes and to develop scenarios for projections of possible future states is limited by understanding of linkages across this continuum. This session is intended to provide assessments of the current state of understanding of biogeochemical cycling across the land-ocean continuum, evaluations of current and needed approaches for observing and modeling system components, assessment of fluxes to the coastal ocean, and discussions of the challenges of development of future state scenarios.
Speakers: Xiao Liu (Princeton University and NOAA GFDL), Tom Bianchi (Univ. Florida), Iris Anderson (VIMS), Lee Cooper (UMCES), Joel Rowland (LANL), Goulven Laurelle (Université Libre de Bruxelles)

Calcification and the carbon cycle (Wednesday)
Chairs: Andrea Fassbender and Jessica Cross
Session Description: 2018 was a year of notable discovery regarding ocean carbonate chemistry, prompting community reflection on important aspects of the marine carbon cycle that are not yet fully understood. One of the major findings relates to changing seasonal cycle amplitudes for carbonate system parameters (e.g., pCO₂, [H⁺], and saturation state) caused by rising ocean temperatures and anthropogenic carbon concentrations. This phenomenon has been anticipated and hypothesized in the literature for over a decade; however, observational evidence at a global scale was just documented for pCO₂ in 2018. Complementary modeling work in the last year has also highlighted some of the implications for marine organisms that may be sensitive to pH and calcium carbonate saturation states in both coastal and open ocean regions. In recognition of these findings, this session will consider linkages between ocean chemistry and marine calcification from observational and modeling perspectives. This topic is particularly relevant due to an ongoing discussions in the community regarding which component of the carbonate chemistry (e.g., dissolved inorganic carbon and [H⁺] vs. saturation state) drives calcification.
Speakers: Andrea Fassbender (MBARI), Lennart Bach (GEOMAR/IMAS Hobart), Bernard Boudreau (Dalhousie), Weifu Guo (WHOI), Kristen Krumhardt (NCAR), George Waldbusser (OSU)

Carbon cycle feedbacks from the seafloor (Wednesday)
Chair: Clare Reimers
Session Description: The seafloor from shallow coastal regimes to the hadal ocean is an interface where carbon is cycled between dissolved and particulate forms, and organic and inorganic pools. This cycling can be the basis of major ecosystems and critical to the biogeochemical cycling of other elements. This session will focus on recent advances in approaches for characterizing the dynamics of benthic carbon cycling and fluxes and on the consequences of these processes. Topics will include seasonal assessments of benthic carbon metabolism within nearshore and shelf regions, the effects of anthropogenic CO₂ invasion into the ocean on calcification and carbonate dissolution in sediments, the effects of warming on gas hydrate destabilization, and carbon mineralization in ocean trenches.
Speakers: Clare Reimers (OSU), Kristen Fogaren (Oregon State Univ.), Amelie Berger (Univ. Virginia), Ronnie Glud (Univ. Southern Denmark), Kathryn Sparrow (FSU), Olivier Sulpis (McGill Univ.)

The effect of size on ocean processes (allometry) and implications for export (Thursday)
Chair: Amy Maas
Session Description: Currently many major models use a suite of allometric relationships to describe and simplify complex interactions in natural systems and predict biogeochemical cycling. This session will describe current effective marine applications of allometry at a range of scales (organismal to ecosystem), but will also present research on the physiology and ecology of oceanic groups that highlight when allometry fails to constrain important variation. We will discuss  a suite of alternative/supplementary “master traits” that appear to be informative, as well as the feasibility of including these in modeling efforts.
Speakers: Amy Mass (BIOS), Nick Nidzieko (UCSB), Anand Gnanadesikan (The Johns Hopkins Univ.), Karen Stamieszkin (VIMS), Ken Andersen (Technical University of Denmark)

Workshop Announcement: NSF EarthCube Workshop for Ocean Time Series Data, September 13-15, 2019 (Univ. Hawai’i)

Rationale: Data synthesis and modeling efforts across ocean time-series represents an important and necessary step forward in broadening our view of a changing ocean and improving our return on investment in ocean time-series. Despite the advances achieved over the past decade, significant barriers remain that hinder work across time-series, including issues related to data access, discoverability, and metadata reporting. Furthermore, incorporation of ocean time series data into ocean and earth system models is currently limited due to the lack of a standardized data format and user interface.

Scope and Goals: To begin addressing this problem, the Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry (OCB) Program (us-ocb.org) is convening a small workshop with funding from NSF EarthCube in September 2019 (in conjunction with OceanObs19). The objective of the workshop is to conduct a gap analysis to identify missing data infrastructure that would increase time series data availability and use. This workshop will provide a much-needed forum for discussion of key issues and barriers surrounding data discovery, access, and interoperability. Participants will strategize a path forward on the development of a common framework for shipboard ocean time series data and metadata reporting, and data management resources.

The overarching objective of this workshop is to move the shipboard ocean time series community toward a Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (“FAIR”) model. Topics of discussion will include (but are not limited to) the following ocean time series cyber-infrastructure challenges:

• Establishing a common data model for reporting core time series variables (e.g., definitions, vocabulary, units, precision, associated errors, etc.)

• Establishing standardized metadata reporting guidelines and required fields to facilitate data discovery and re-use

• Improving interoperability among different databases/portals

• Mechanisms to streamline and simplify data submission to oceanographic data management entities (e.g., automation of the time-series data acquisition/upload process)

• Vision and framework for a dedicated time-series data interface that also includes user-friendly visualization and computation options

• Meeting the needs of a broader range of users for data synthesis and information products emerging from ocean time-series

• Application of unique identifiers (such as DOIs) to data sets to enable citation and crediting of data providers

This workshop will be limited to ~30-40 people to ensure productive discussions that help us accomplish these goals. If you are interested in contributing to this workshop, please apply here by July 15.

Do you generate, use, or manage ocean time series data? In preparation for this workshop, we have developed a short survey to better understand the data challenges and needs of the ocean time series community. Please take a few minutes to complete this survey. Your feedback will help shape future cyber-infrastructure for ocean time series.