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Program NewsBiological OceanographyStaff Changes: Alison Sipe, a 1999 Knauss Sea Grant Fellow at NSF, is continuing to work in the Division of Ocean Sciences (OCE) as a Science Assistant with primary emphasis on serving the Directorate for Geosciences in the NSF-wide Biocomplexity Phase II competition along with Phil Taylor. She will also be working between OCE and the Office of Polar Programs (OPP) to help administrate this year's Life in Extreme Environments (LExEn) competition. Cynthia Suchman has joined the Biological Oceanography Program (Bio OCE) staff as an Assistant Program Director. A 1999 John Knauss Sea Grant Fellow, Cynthia comes to NSF following a year on Capitol Hill where she worked for the House Committee on Resources, Subcommittee on Fisheries Conservation and Oceans. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Rhode Island studying the behavior and feeding ecology of zooplankton. OEUVRE - Ocean Ecology: Understanding and Vision for REsearch: The workshop report, compiled by Peter Jumars and Mark Hay, is now available. This document is the product of a community discussion, initiated by Bio OCE, on future areas for research in the ecology of the world's oceans. If you would like a copy, please contact Shannon Hughes at shughes@nsf.gov or 703-306-1580. One of the strong recommendations from OEUVRE was that much greater attention in ocean sciences needs to be placed on understanding the functional significance of biological processes and biological diversity in biogeochemical dynamics. Nowhere is this more necessary than in understanding the inter-related cycling of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and silica, and the role of trace elements in the biological processes regulating these cycles. With this in mind, the Bio OCE Program recently initiated a community workshop called EDOCC - Ecological Determinants of Ocean Carbon Cycling - to further the recommendations of OEUVRE. Doug Capone and Ricardo Letelier, along with an excellent organizing committee, have led the EDOCC dialogue to date. This was born out of the recognition that we still do not have a good understanding of the role and importance that marine ecosystems play in atmospheric carbon sequestration and burial. The EDOCC workshop was held in March 2000. More on EDOCC can be seen at http://picasso.oce.orst.edu/ORSOO/EDOCC/EDOCC.html. An important part of EDOCC is gathering and incorporating comments on the report from a wide segment of the community via the web page. The EDOCC discussion is now complemented by another community dialogue: OCTET: Ocean Carbon: Transport, Exchanges and Transformations (http://www.msrc.sunysb.edu/octet/). Other community discussions may follow deriving from EDOCC or taking on additional issues (e.g., the role and impact on higher trophic level). Three new LTERs (Long-Term Ecological Research in Land/Ocean Margin
Ecosystems) are being established with support from Bio OCE and the
LTER Program (headed by Scott Collins, Division of Environmental Biology).
All deal with interactions of marine, estuarine, land, and freshwater
systems along the coastal margin, and augment the existing coastal LTERs
in Plum Island Sound, MA and the Virginia Coastal Reserve. The new sites
are: the Santa Barbara Channel and watersheds (PI: Dan Reed, UCSB);
the Florida Everglades and Florida Bay (PI: Dan Childers, Florida Int'l
U); and the Georgia coastal system around Sapelo Island (PI: Tim Hollibaugh,
U of GA). As per "the Madison meeting" (http://atlantic.evsc.virginia.edu/~bph/ In cooperation with NOAA, NSF/OCE/Biological Oceanography is reviewing
proposals for the U.S. GLOBEC Northeast Pacific Program in the Coastal
Gulf of Alaska. Proposals were due 1 May 2000 (http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi? There are about 300 research proposals and about 170 incubation activity proposals for the Biocomplexity Phase II competition. Bio OCE is serving as the "lead" for the participation of the entire Geosciences Directorate (Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences). The Biocomplexity initiative involves most of the NSF Directorates and will be administered by a group of program directors from across the NSF Directorates. The proposals are very inter-disciplinary; almost a third of the research proposals and a quarter of the incubation proposals are relevant to the interests of the Geosciences Directorate. Awards should be announced in September. Last year's Biocomplexity Phase I Competition was very successful for the Ocean Sciences. Of the approximately $28 million allocated, about half of the funds will support projects of central importance to our understanding of biocomplexity in ocean systems. There are two awards that constitute a tightly linked couplet of projects (for ~ $7.5 million) on regional to global scale biogeochemistry and ecosystem processes revolving around: iron limited productivity, nitrogen fixation by photosynthetic plankton, the delivery of iron via land-atmosphere connections or land/riverine connections, and the interacting limitations of other essential elements. The titles and PIs of these two awards are:
The two other ocean-related Biocomplexity awards are:
Life in Extreme Environments (LExEn): Bio OCE is serving as the "lead" for the participation of OCE in LExEn this year, while OPP (Polly Penhale, Program Director) is leading this activity. Proposals were due in April and awards will be announced by the end of summer 2000. Bio OCE continues cooperative support of The US Joint Global Ocean Flux Study, Synthesis and Modeling Program (US JGOFS SMP) with the Chemical Oceanography Program. The main objective of the SMP is to synthesize knowledge gained from US JGOFS and related studies into models that reflect our current understanding of the ocean carbon cycle and its associated uncertainties. In particular, the processes that control carbon partitioning among oceanic reservoirs, and the implications on ocean/atmosphere carbon exchange, are to be emphasized. Current projects and investigators are listed at: http://www1.whoi.edu/mzweb/resarea.html and http://www1.whoi.edu/mzweb/smp_people.html. Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Supplements are routinely supported in Bio OCE. We fund students each year as part of ongoing research projects, usually with one or two students working on an isolated project. We believe, however, that there is the potential to improve the experiences derived from REU supplements; doing more than what can be done with individual undergraduate students written into individual awards or supported by other means. We are encouraging PIs to consider more creative uses of REU supplements. Bio OCE is encouraging PIs to propose ways in which they and other collaborating scientists supported by OCE might use a number of undergraduates in a sort of research consortium arrangement. We are interested in arrangements that provide experience with interdisciplinary research in a community setting of PIs, graduate students, post-docs and technicians. In addition, the setting should provide students with diverse research experiences. Consortial arrangements might include mentorship by a number of PIs at a single institution. Alternatively, a consortium might occur in a field operation implemented by PIs/mentors from different institutions. We are looking for creative plans for the use of REU supplements that would not fit well in the context of REU sites, but do more to show undergraduate students the diversity and dynamics of interdisciplinary research in the ocean sciences. Resubmission of Declined Proposals - Are you feeling overwhelmed by the number of proposals you receive from NSF to review? Do you sometimes imagine that you receive the same proposal over and over again, (apparently) unchanged? When this happens are you tempted to rely on the comments you made in the previous submission rather than carefully re-evaluate the proposal? For many members of the Ocean Sciences Community, "yes" seems to be the answer to all these questions. There has been a long-standing NSF Policy that "A declined proposal may be resubmitted, but only after it has undergone substantial revision." (GPG, NSF 00-2). In the future, PIs will see a new section in the Panel and Program Summary of recommendations, reminding them of this NSF policy. After a second submission, Bio OCE will ask for a letter justifying further resubmissions and explaining how reviewer and panel concerns have been addressed. Our intention is to reduce reviewer fatigue, perhaps improve the quality of the external reviews, and encourage PIs to make needed changes in proposals earlier rather than later. One final note: Soon Bio OCE will be in need of a rotating program director, so if you know of any good, qualified candidates, please contact the Program. Phil Taylor (prtaylor@nsf.gov) |