GEOTRACES Sessions at 2018 Ocean Sciences Meeting
2018 Ocean Sciences Meeting
(11-16 February 2018, Portland, Oregon, USA, http://osm.agu.org/2018/).
GEOTRACES Town Halls:
Release of new GEOTRACES Data Product
Wednesday, February 14, 2018, 12:45 PM – 01:45 PM
Oregon Convention Center – D137-D138
GEOTRACES, an international study of the marine biogeochemical cycles of trace elements and their isotopes, has released its second data product (IDP2017). The new data product expands greatly on the first collection of results released in 2014 in two important ways: 1) by adding a substantial body data from new cruises and 2) by adding additional datasets not available in the 2014 data product from cruises across the five world Oceans (e.g. aerosols, isotopes and biological parameters that support the emerging BioGEOTRACES initiative). This expanded set of parameters available in the IDP2017, ranging across micronutrients, contaminants, radioactive and stable isotopes and a broad suite of hydrographic parameters used to trace water masses provides an unprecedented means to understand the role of trace elements in shaping the functioning of the Ocean system. We invite everyone to this town hall to learn about accessing IDP2017 and how it can be used for interdisciplinary research and teaching applications: http://www.bodc.ac.uk/geotraces/data/idp2017/
Organizers: Robert F Anderson, Columbia University of New York; Alessandro Tagliabue, University of Liverpool; Gregory A Cutter, Old Dominion University and Maria Teresa Maldonado, University of British Columbia.
Developing a framework for trace element, isotope, and other biogeochemical research in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea
Tuesday, February 13, 2018, 12:45 PM – 01:45 PM
Oregon Convention Center – D137-D138
In addition to their dynamical influence on the formation of the Gulf Stream, the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea are strongly affected by continental margin processes such as major river inputs and significant submarine groundwater discharges. GEOTRACES studies have increasingly demonstrated the importance of ocean margins in affecting trace element and isotope (TEI) fluxes to the open ocean. Given the importance of these marginal fluxes for cycling of carbon and nutrients, the Gulf of Mexico has been a regional focus for recent OCB activities. However, these activities, as well as the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, have revealed major gaps in our understanding of how inputs to the shelf influence biogeochemical and biological processes in open waters, especially with regard to TEIs. Most such Gulf studies have focused on the Louisiana and West Florida shelves, with little attention to open waters and interactions with the Loop Current. The steering committees of US GEOTRACES and OCB are beginning a conversation devoted to TEI research in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean. We invite GEOTRACES, OCB, and other ocean scientists interested in these marginal seas to discuss processes of interest, existing programs and data sets, and potential steps forward.
Organizers: Alan M Shiller, University of Southern Mississippi; Heather M Benway, Woods Hole Oceanographic Inst.; Robert F Anderson, Columbia University & Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory; Angela N Knapp, Florida State University; Benjamin S Twining, Bigelow Lab for Ocean Sciences and Kristen N Buck, University of South Florida.
GEOTRACES and GEOTRACES-relevant sessions:
The Behavior of Trace Elements and Isotopes in Different Ocean Basins: New Insights from Comparisons and Contrasts
Session ID#: 28118
Session Description:
Recent international programs such as GEOTRACES have been examining the biogeochemical cycling of trace elements and isotopes (TEIs) in the world’s oceans to reveal the mechanisms and rates affecting their concentrations, distributions, chemical forms, and interactions with organisms. In addition to studies by individual investigators, the accumulating results show many similarities, but some surprising differences between ocean basins, with a classic example being the regionally-specific Cd/PO4 relationships. In the same way that deviations from the Redfield ratio of N/P between ocean basins, known since the 1970s GEOSECS program, provide insight into nitrogen cycle processes, what can we learn from the comparisons and contrasts of TEIs, and what tools are needed to explore and test these observations? This session seeks presentations from the observational and modeling communities on lessons learned from inter basin TEI data sets with respect to inputs to, cycling within, and exports from the world’s oceans. In addition we invite contributions that consider how TEI distributions, their chemical speciation, and interactions with micro-organisms shape microbial community structure and productivity in various ocean basins.
Primary Chair: Gregory A Cutter, Old Dominion University, Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Norfolk, VA, United States
Co-chairs: Adrian Burd, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, United States, Jay Thomas Cullen, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada and Tung-Yuan Ho, Research Center for Environmental Changes Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
Abiotic and Biotic Retention, Recycling, and Remineralization of Metals in the Ocean
Session ID#: 23502
Session Description:
Trace metals shape both the biogeochemical functioning and the biological structure of oceanic provinces, and considerable insight into trace metal distributions have been gleaned from international programs like GEOTRACES. To date, observational and modelling efforts have mainly focused on modes of external metal supply from different sources. While this has yielded important advances, we also know that metals undergo key internal transformations such as biotic uptake, scavenging, recycling, and remineralization. These internal transformations play crucial roles in shaping the biogeochemical cycling of metals by governing their bioavailability, oceanic distributions, and residence times. In this session we solicit presentations that address key questions regarding the abiotic and biotic processes regulating (i) the retention timescale for metals in the upper ocean, (ii) surface ocean metal recycling and bioavailability, (iii) the subsurface regeneration length scales for metals in the ocean interior, and (iv) the role of mineral versus organic characteristics of sinking particles on metal scavenging. We also seek presentations that provide insights into how these key questions are mediated by differing physico-chemical and microbial processes in contrasting ocean settings. Presentations showing insights from the diverse standpoints of biogeochemical oceanography and molecular ecology, from both observational and modelling perspectives, are strongly encouraged.
Primary Chair: Philip W Boyd, University of Tasmania, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, Hobart, Australia
Co-chairs: Kristen N Buck, University of South Florida Tampa, College of Marine Science, Tampa, FL, United States; University of South Florida, College of Marine Science, St. Petersburg, FL, United States, Jessica N Fitzsimmons, Texas A&M University, Department of Oceanography, United States and Alessandro Tagliabue, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom
The Dawn of BioGEOTRACES: Metal-Microbe Interactions in the Ocean
Session ID#: 27768
Session Description:
Trace metals are essential for life, catalysing key cellular reactions which then govern patterns of ocean fertility and biodiversity. Fundamental in this regard are the ways in which ocean microbes acquire essential metals and how biological activity is affected by metal availability. Developments in this field are being led by advances in analytical chemistry, nanotechnology, molecular biology, and bioinformatics, as well as the expansion of ‘omics’-related observations of in-situ microbial communities, and the advent of new high resolution geochemical data from the international GEOTRACES program. It is now timely to bring together insights from these different disciplines, spanning observation and modelling approaches to better understand how microbial activity, diversity and ecology is shaped by interactions with trace metals over different space and time scales. By linking across disciplines, there is the potential to develop the mechanistic understanding required to inform the ecological and biogeochemical models we rely on for testing hypotheses and projecting the impacts of ocean change. We are specifically interested in contributions that address (i) metal uptake and competition between microbes for metal resources, (ii) how microbes adapt their physiology to metal scarcity and varied supply and (iii) how trace metals shape cellular function and evolution.
Primary Chair: Adrian Marchetti, University of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill, Department of Marine Sciences, Chapel Hill, NC, United States
Co-chairs: Maria Teresa Maldonado, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, Alessandro Tagliabue, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom and Yeala Shaked, Hebrew University, Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences,, Eilat, Israel
Biogeochemical Processes Across Oxic-Anoxic Transitions
Session ID#: 28621
Session Description:
A suite of metabolically and chemically important oxidation-reduction reactions occur through the transitions from oxic to anoxic regions of the ocean. These reactions drive nutrient availability and metal solubility, as well as organic matter production, consumption, and preservation. As oxygen minimum and deficient zones expand, redox reactions in low to no oxygen environments are becoming globally more important, both for the nitrogen and carbon cycles and also for trace metals. Understanding such environments can provide an important analogue for ocean chemistry and microbial life in the Precambrian, prior to the great oxygenation events. This session seeks to bring together geochemical, biological, and physical scientists working on low oxygen and anoxic regions, in order to create an integrated picture of biogeochemistry in these environments. Presentations from observational, experimental, or modeling standpoints on nutrients, trace elements, dissolved gases, isotope systematics, microbiology, biological productivity, or physical drivers in these regions are all invited. We especially encourage submissions investigating the redox transition in the water column or sediments of restricted basins such as Saanich Inlet and the Black Sea, as well as GEOTRACES and open-ocean studies of settings such as the Eastern Tropical Pacific, North Atlantic, and Indian OMZs.
Primary Chair: Jeffry V Sorensen, University of Victoria, School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Victoria, BC, Canada
Co-chairs: Roberta Claire Hamme, University of Victoria, School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Victoria, BC, Canada and Tim M Conway, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, United States
Ocean Biogeochemistry and Air-Sea Interactions
Session ID#: 29651
Session Description:
Studies of ocean biogeochemistry related to air-sea interactions are providing significant new information to help us understand a wide variety of physical, chemical and biological processes in the oceans. There are many processes that link the surface ocean and the lower atmosphere, for example, the release of biogenic compounds as sources of cloud or ice condensation nuclei, the deposition of natural and anthropogenic aerosols that can affect plankton communities, the transport of airborne microbes that can alter the dynamics of proximal and distant ecosystems, the biology, chemistry and physics of the sea-surface microlayer (SML) as the interface through which all exchanges between the atmosphere and the ocean occur, the enrichment of surfactants and other biogenic compounds in the SML that can affect gas exchange rates, etc. Understanding these processes is crucial for improving the reliability of regional and global models and the evaluation of future scenarios. We welcome contributions on all aspects of the physics, chemistry, and biology of air-sea interactions, including observations, experimentation, methodological or technical developments, and theoretical and modeling efforts.
Primary Chair: Francesc Peters, Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM, CSIC), Barcelona, Spain
Co-chairs: William M Landing, Florida State University, Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science, Tallahassee, FL, United States, Oliver Wurl, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment, Wilhelmshaven, Germany and Brian Ward, National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG), School of Physics, Galway, Ireland