Earth Sciences: Oceanography: Projects

a cooperative effort to generate a unified data set and to determine the global distribution and inventories of inorganic nutrients, both natural and anthropogenic carbon species and natural and bomb-produced radiocarbon from data acquired from several projects such as WOCE, JGOFS, OACES.

The Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) is intended to be a permanent global system for observations, modelling and analysis of marine and ocean variables needed to support operational ocean services worldwide.

"An International Partnership in Geological Oceanography" -- Texas A&M University

The overall aim of the NERC CCMS "COIN" project is to improve the understanding of the active processes in coastal and shelf seas and their essential interactions, thereby enabling the development of coupled models for forecasting and management into the next century.

The World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) is a component of the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) and is the most ambitious oceanographic experiment undertaken to-date.

PROMISE's objectives are to develop a framework in which to optimise the application of existing pre-operational dynamical models of the North Sea and to quantify sediment exchange rates and scales between coast and the near-shore. PROMISE is an EU-RTD Project.

PROVESS is a joint European MAST III funded interdisciplinary study of vertical fluxes of properties through the water column and the surface and bottom boundaries based on the integrated application of new measuring techniques, new advances in turbulence theory and new models.

The principal objective of the JERICHO project is to investigate which parts of Britain's coastline may have experienced an increase in wave height similar to that observed by satellites in the surrounding seas. The project is funded by the British National Space Centre and the UK Environment Agency.

The EC MAST III project is centered on an important and recently discovered genus of marine photosynthetic microorganism: Prochlorococcus. This prokaryote proliferates in oligotrophic areas, including the Mediterranean and Red Seas, and is the tiniest and numerically the most abundant photosynthetic organism and accounts for a large part (up to 50%) of the photosynthetic biomass and primary production in these areas.

LOIS was a 6 year project (1992 - 1998) of the UK's Natural Environment Research Council involving over 360 scientists from 11 institutes and 27 universities. This project was the United Kingdom's contribution to LOICZ. It aims were to quantify and simulate the fluxes and transformations of materials (sediments, nutrients, contaminants) into and out of the coastal zone, extending from the catchment to the edge of the continental shelf. The main study area, embracing river catchments, estuaries and coastal seas, was the UK East Coast from Berwick upon Tweed to Great Yarmouth, concentrating on the Humber and its catchment, and to a lesser extent the River Tweed. The shelf edge study was focused on an area to the west of Scotland.

The aim of this study is relate changes in the properties of the water column and associated sucessions in the phytoplankton with changes in optical properties and ocean colour. Models based on these relationships will be developed and validated. These models will facilitate the interpretation of measurements of ocean colour (remote or in-situ) in terms of the temporal and spatial structures of phytoplankton communities.

Impact of a Climatic Gradient on the Physiological Ecology of a Pelagic crustacean - a study of the functional marine biodiversity as a basis for understanding ecosystem structure, dynamics and resilience is focused on the Northern krill. The patterns of diversity in this species - an important component of Atlantic communities - will be investigated at specific locations in the north-eastern Atlantic, the Kattegat and the Meditarranean.

MEDEA is a combined experimental and theoretical approach towards understanding the mechanisms determining microbial ecosystem dynamics in the photic zone. Centered around an idealized conceptual/mathematical model, questions are addressed concerning mechanisms regulating structure and function of the food web.

a research program organized by oceanographers and fisheries scientists to address the question of how global climate change may affect the abundance and production of animals in the sea.

The objectives of this project are to determine the interrelationships between the physical properties of ecosystems and the ecology of organisms in the generation of biodiversity, to measure objectively the resultant diversity and to produce operational concepts of biodiversity which are of general applicability and importance.

aims to advance our understanding of the global ocean ecosystem and how it responds to global climate change. GLOBEC investigates the links between climate and marine ecosystems.