Earth Sciences: Oceanography: Projects: Page 8

A Thematic Programme of the Natural Environment Research Council. It is funded for a period of five years starting in 2000. Its aim is to develop coupled modelling and observational systems for the pelagic ecosystem, with emphasis on physical factors affecting zooplankton population dynamics. MarProd provides a major UK contribution to the international Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics project (GLOBEC).

The main goals of the MEDATLAS project are to update the available data sets of temperature and salinity profiles measured in the Mediterranean Sea, to check its dataquality, to merge compiled datasets, update climatological statistics and to make the numerical data available for other users.

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.

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.

Measures, understands and models shelf-ocean exchange in a typical coastal upwelling region of the eastern boundary layer of the subtropical ocean.

The NorthEast Pacific Time-Series Undersea Networked Experiments project is a regional-scale ocean observatory for interactive, real-time, long term ocean and earth studies and is led in Canada by the University of Victoria.

Project to establish a regional-scale ocean observatory in the northeast Pacific Ocean. The Project's 3,000-km network of fiber-optic/power cables will encircle and cross the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate in the northeast Pacific Ocean, an area roughly 500 km by 1,000 km in size. The project office is located at the University of Washington in Seattle.

aims ultimately to provide scientists with the capability to collect routine physical, biological, chemical and geophysical data, to depths of 6000 metres and over transects of several thousands of kilometres via autonomous underwater vehicles.

Real-time coastal monitoring project based in California designed to monitor a wide spectrum of temporal and spatial variability in the coastal ocean environment.

Hydrothermal vent monitoring - links intruments and a camera located within the caldera of a submarine volcano to the Internet.