ABSTRACT OCE-9817821 It has only been within the past four years that ocean scientists have verified that the ultratrace amounts of iron dissolved in surface seawater may limit biological production throughout vast regions of the world ocean, particularly those low-production regions far from the continents where other nutrients (like nitrogen and silica) seem to be in excess. Since verification of the "iron hypothesis" in the Western Equatorial Pacific by this team of investigators and their colleagues - the IronEx I and IronEx II experiments - there has been excited speculation that the major oceanic region where iron limitation should occur is the Southern Ocean, particularly in the high latitudes near Antarctica. The purpose of this award is to support a planning and evaluation workshop for a Southern Ocean "IronEx III". The list of invited participants will include virtually the entire community of American iron biogeochemistry experts as well as their top international counterparts.
