NSF Ocean Sciences Office Hours

September 30, 3-4:30 PM (ET)

Staff and division leadership will share information and updates on preparing proposals, address commonly asked questions, and answer yours. These office hours webinars will not be recorded.

Register https://nsf.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_yu5jE4EWQl2FyUZ1x2LEAw?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery#/registration

OCB is seeking nominations for new Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) members, including a new early career member! The term begins in January 2026. The following SSC members are scheduled to rotate off at the end of 2025:

• Yige Zhang (formerly Texas A&M University) – paleoceanography and paleoclimatology; organic and stable isotope geochemistry; global biogeochemical cycles
• David “Roo” Nicholson (Woods Hole Oceanographic Inst.) – global biogeochemical cycles in the context of a changing climate, cycling of dissolved gases, including oxygen, carbon dioxide, methane and the noble gases
• Jessica Luo (NOAA/GFDL) – plankton ecology, food webs, biogeochemical dynamics, global-scale marine ecosystem models
• Dreux Chappell (USF) – molecular microbial ecology, phytoplankton cultivation/physiology, and trace metal biogeochemistry
• Anela Choy (Scripps Inst. Oceanography) – Deep-sea biological oceanography, water column food web ecology, pelagic ecosystem dynamics, biochemical tracers

We are especially interested in filling the following expertise gaps:

• Deep sea biogeochemical and ecological processes
• Molecular microbial ecology
• Plankton ecology
• Nitrogen cycling
• Paleoceanographic perspectives on marine ecosystems and biogeochemical cycles

To qualify for the early career spot, a nominee must have completed a PhD within the last 4 years; both postdoctoral researchers and new faculty members are eligible. For the early career nominees who are currently postdocs, a letter of support from the nominee’s postdoctoral advisor is required in addition to filling out the nomination form. This letter of support should be sent to hbenway@whoi.edu.

Please consider casting a wide net in submitting nominations. We are seeking to entrain a broad range of voices and ideas in OCB! Nominees can be from any US-based institution (including Univ. Puerto Rico, Univ. Virgin Islands or in other US territories). Please submit nomination(s) (self-nominations are welcome) HERE by November 21. All nominees’ 2-page abbreviated CVs should be sent to hbenway@whoi.edu.

Nominees are primarily evaluated based on their science expertise (relative to emerging expertise gaps) and their leadership potential. We encourage re-nomination if a prior nomination round was not successful. Note that many SSC members are nominated multiple times before becoming members. OCB SSC members serve a 3-year term. To learn more about what the OCB SSC is/does, please visit the SSC page of the OCB website and feel free to reach out to current SSC members about time commitment and their experiences as SSC members.

The Leaky Deltas OCB workshop was held 17-20 March 2025 at Louisiana State University, in Baton Rouge, USA, which is situated within the Mississippi River delta. We brought together 57 members of the research community who study river deltas in the context of the global carbon cycle. The goal of the workshop was to create a community consensus on the state of delta carbon cycle science, identify critical knowledge gaps, and brainstorm opportunities and priorities for future research efforts. Participants ranged in career stage from graduate student to senior scientist, and from disciplines ranging from biogeochemistry to geomorphology, river scientists to oceanographers; and scientists using a variety of methodological approaches.

The workshop included five oral sessions, four breakout sessions, numerous opportunities for discussion over meals and coffee breaks, a trip to the LSU Center for River Studies, and a workshop dinner. The breakout sessions were formatted to encourage discussion among interdisciplinary groups of scientists at different career stages. During breakout session 1, participants were randomly assigned to groups that spanned career stages and expertise. This session was aimed at identifying grand challenges in delta carbon cycle science. Breakout session 2 had a disciplinary focus, where we broke out into groups of biogeochemistry, geomorphology, modeling, and ecosystems. Breakout session 3 was broken out into groups based on physical domains of the delta: river, wetlands, subaqueous delta, shelf, and continental slope. A highlight of day three was a field trip to the LSU Center for River Studies, where workshop participants were guided on a tour of the historical changes of the Mississippi River Delta, as well as the large-scale physical model of the delta. On the fourth and final day of the workshop, we had short break-out sessions and reconvened as a whole to synthesize ideas and circle back to the workshop objectives.

In summary, the workshop resulted in a consensus on the key knowledge gaps and research grand challenges, which included constraining the composition of organic matter, the timescales of geomorphic processes, biogeochemical reaction rates, impacts of human perturbations and extreme events, and challenges in monitoring deltaic processes. Workshop participants now have the task of writing a position paper that summarizes these grand research challenges, identifies the data needed to address these challenges, and recommends a framework and directions for future research. One outcome of the workshop included the structure and organization for this paper. The early career workshop participants will also lead an early-career-led perspective paper that discusses ideas for integrating new technologies and methodologies to address these grand challenges and identifies future challenges for the delta science community.

Learn more about this workshop

The NASA Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) Project and Ocean Carbon & Biogeochemistry (OCB) Program are hosting a second PACE Data Hackweek. This is a one-week social coding event that will include a combination of lectures, tutorials, and project work (data processing and analysis) that will kick-start research using the Earth science data streams generated by the OCI, SPEXone, and HARP2 instruments on board the observatory. Other projects that combine PACE data with other satellite data, such as from EarthCARE, TROPOMI, or SWOT are also encouraged. Participants will gain behind-the-scenes access to all aspects of PACE.

3-7 August 2025
University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC)

Learn more and apply by March 24

Introduction to Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem (PACE) Hyperspectral Observations for Water Quality Monitoring

This online, introductory course will be cost-free and have three, 1.5-hour parts:

Part 1: Introduction to the PACE Mission for Water Quality Monitoring (September 25^th)

Part 2: Overview, Access, and Analysis of PACE Ocean Color Data Products (October 2^nd)

Part 3: Access and Visualization of PACE-OCI Data using Python/Jupyter Notebook Software (October 9^th)

Registration is now open – course will be offered in English AND Spanish!

For more information and to register visit:

• ENGLISH: https://appliedsciences.nasa.gov/get-involved/training/english/arset-introduction-plankton-aerosol-cloud-ocean-ecosystem-pace

• SPANISH: https://appliedsciences.nasa.gov/get-involved/training/english/arset-introduccion-los-datos-hiperespectrales-de-la-mision-plankton

NASA’s ARSET program offers free, online training on using Earth Observations for decision making that are open to the public. Courses are designed for a broad audience, ranging from introductory to advanced. For more on ARSET and to see their wealth of upcoming and previous trainings, please visit their website.