This award will provide three years of funding to sustain the operation of the U.S. GEOTRACES Project Office at the Lamont-Dougherty Earth Observatory , thereby supporting the U.S. contribution to the international GEOTRACES program. GEOTRACES is an international program designed to study the global marine biogeochemical cycles of trace elements and their isotopes (TEIs). Trace elements and their isotopes play important roles in the ocean as nutrients, as tracers of processes now and in the past, and as contaminants. Their biogeochemical cycling has direct implications for research in such diverse areas as the carbon cycle, climate change, ocean ecosystems, and environmental contamination. GEOTRACES promises clear benefits to each of these areas by significantly advancing knowledge of the marine biogeochemical cycles of TEIs.
During its first two years of operation, the primary activity of the Project Office, measured in terms of time and effort, has been to support GEOTRACES meetings and workshops. Seven GEOTRACES meetings and workshops were supported during the past two years, and three more are being planned for Fall 2008, before the end of the current funding period. The second major activity of the Office has been to support communication and outreach by developing and maintaining the GEOTRACES web site <www.geotraces.org>, by creating and maintaining GEOTRACES e-mail lists, and by using both of these vehicles for disseminating information about GEOTRACES.
Principal activities of the Project Office over the next three years, will be: (1) Support of meetings and workshops; (2) Transferring certain activities to an International Project Office (IPO); (3) Supporting several steps associated with the implementing US GEOTRACES cruises, including serving as an interface between cruise scientists and the Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office in Woods hole; and (4) Enhancing the GEOTRACES web site to streamline access to information.
Broader Impacts: The Project Office supports a broad range of activities for the US GEOTRACES program, as well as supporting a number of activities for the international GEOTRACES program. GEOTRACES, with support from the Project Office, serves as a focal point for the Chemical Oceanography community, providing a sense of identity and direction. This is healthy for the community, as well as for individual scientists, many of whom feel that the field will benefit from having the first major coordinated program since GEOSECS. The Project Office also serves the broader community by acting as a point of contact with other programs sharing similar objectives. Within the U.S., there has been increasing interaction over the past year between GEOTRACES and the Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry program, with some investigators now calling for an OCB process study to be coordinated with a GEOTRACES section. Within the international arena, the PI interacts regularly with the IMBER and SOLAS programs, exploring the benefits of partnering in research with each at some point in the future. Coordinating activities among research programs offers substantial payback in terms of new opportunities for interdisciplinary research.
This award supported the US GEOTRACES Project Office, which, in turn, supports the activities of scores of oceanographers in the U.S. who contribute to the international GEOTRACES program. GEOTRACES is an international research program <www.geotraces.org> that is measuring the distribution throughout the ocean of many chemical elements that are present at very low concentrations (known as "trace elements"). An anticipated benefit of this research is a more comprehensive knowledge of the sources of trace-element nutrients, such as iron, that are essential for the growth of marine organisms. GEOTRACES findings will also be used to form more reliable predictions of the transport and fate of contaminants in the ocean. To date, 14 nations have led research cruises in support of GEOTRACES, and we look forward to growth of the program to include more nations over the next few years. The US GEOTRACES Project Office coordinates logistical support for U. S. scientists in the field of Chemical Oceanography who study the marine biogeochemical cycles of trace elements and their isotopes. This research involves measuring the distributions of trace elements in the ocean as well as identifying and quantifying the processes that supply trace elements to the ocean, and the process that remove trace elements from the ocean. Logistical support includes organizing and coordinating workshops to plan and implement multi-investigator coordinated research on the biogeochemical cycles of trace elements in the ocean. It also includes support for meetings that allow scientists to inform one another about their findings so that each scientist benefits from new knowledge gained by their colleagues. Meetings supported by the project office also support intercalibration and data management, two key aspects in the success of any large research program. Intercalibration involves cross-calibrating results from different labs to ensure internal consistency and, therefore, the highest level of accuracy and precision of the results. Sound data management ensures that the products of the program are widely and freely available, to the public as well as to other scientists. Ultimately, data from GEOTRACES programs around the world will be available from the GEOTRACES Data Assembly Centre in the UK < www.bodc.ac.uk/geotraces/>. The US GEOTRACES project office coordinates financial support for travel costs incurred by U.S. investigators who participate either in meetings hosted by the U.S. GEOTRACES program, or by international partners in GEOTRACES. A complete summary of GEOTRACES meetings can be found on the home page <www.geotraces.org>.
