9625934 Atkinson This Americas Program award will support Drs. Larry Atkinson, Arnoldo Valle-Levinson, John Klinck, Eileen Hofman, and a graduate student of the Old Dominion University, Center for Coastal Physical Oceanography, on a study to initiate systematic studies of the coastal ocean ecosystem of the Chilean Inland Sea (CIS). Collaborating with the group will be Drs. Victor Marin and Vivian Montecino, Universidad de Chile, and oceanographers from other Chilean universities. This collaborative research will be accomplished through extensive use of computer information servers and collaborative software over the INTERNET network. Oceanographic processes in the CIS region will be identified using remote sensing data. The data will be analyzed and made available to all users. The CIS ecosystem includes the coastal ocean, interior sea, fjords and inlets. Despite its ecological importance and its high biological productivity, it has received limited attention, and few studies have been conducted in the region. Red tide outbreaks have been reported which have caused massive mortalities in the salmon farming in the area. The study proposed here will constitute one of the steps toward increasing our understanding of the mechanisms that trigger red tide events. The U.S. researchers will contribute their expertise in physical processes and ecosystem modeling in coastal and estuarine regions and scientists from Chile will bring theirs in productivity and ecological issues. ***
