This award provides funds to the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) for a long-standing program of travel assistance to qualified and active oceanographic researchers from developing countries and nations with economies in transition. SCOR travel grants are awarded to enable such individuals to attend international meetings relevant to their scientific interests and to those of SCOR and the Division of Ocean Sciences of NSF. This ongoing project has become the cornerstone of SCOR's efforts to provide assistance to marine scientists in the third world and, more recently in Russia and Eastern Europe. All recipients of funds are informed that this assistance is made possible through a grant to SCOR from the US National Science Foundation. Project objectives include: broading the participation of scientists from developing countries, eastern Europe, and Russia in international marine science events; encouraging contacts between scientists from the United States and other developed countries with their colleagues in developing countries, and to facilitate the transfer of knowledge in all disciplines of oceanography; making available specialized regional knowledge and expertise at meetings where this is needed, for example, in the planning of regional components of large-scale experiments; and providing opportunities for involvement of developing country scientists in international collaborative programs.
The purpose of this grant was to help scientists from developing countries and countries with "economies in transition" (Russia, Eastern Europe) interact with scientists from the United States and other developed countries, and to be trained in modern ocean science techniques. The grant supported participation of developing country scientists in scientific meetings where they could meet and network with scientists from other countries, as well as supporting specific training in oceanographic observations. A portion of the grant was used to send developed country scientists to developing countries to teach and mentor students and scientists. Support was provided for 35 different meetings and training activities during the grant and 167 scientists from 34 different developing countries and countries with economies in transition participated. Meetings and summer schools supported covered all areas of ocean science, including ocean acidification, interactions of the coastal ocean with the deep ocean, new automated ocean biology observations, the effects of the physical environment on ocean biology and fisheries, ocean carbon data, interactions of ocean chemistry and biology, interactions of the ocean and atmosphere, impacts of nutrients on red tides and what controls microalgae that cause ciguatera, techinques for modeling and predicting red tides, use of satellites for oceanography, the effects of megacities on coastal areas, effects of nutrients on biiology at the ocean surface, cycling and effects of ocean trace elements in the Mediterranean Sea and off Asian countries, effects of the circulation around southern Africa on global climate, zooplankton producitivity, ecosystem studies of subarctic seas, marine biodiversity, use of devices on commercial ships to collect plankton, and interactions between the land and ocean. These topics are important for both expanding our basic knowledge of the ocean and how it works, as well as increasing our ability to manage the ocean and its resources more wisely. Such support benefits the National Science Foundation and the United States generally by helping U.S. scientists have trained scientific partners in other countries, to participate together in research and observations of interest to the United States.
