Scientific Sessions

Air-Sea Interactions

AI01 Air-Sea Interaction and Climate Variability in the Atlantic Ocean: Observations, Modeling, and Theories

Organizers:
Laifang Li, lfl5240@psu.edu
Nicholas Foukal, nfoukal@whoi.edu
Feili Li, feili.li@xmu.edu.cn
Kimberley Drouin, kimberley.drouin@duke.edu

The Atlantic Ocean exchanges heat and carbon with the overlying atmosphere. This active coupling between ocean and atmosphere is largely responsible for modes of climate variability like the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the East Atlantic Pattern (EAP), the Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV), and the South Atlantic subtropical dipole (SASD) that span a wide temporal and spatial spectrum. In recent years, significant progress has been made in advancing our knowledge and understanding of Atlantic climate variability and in predicting future climate change in this region. Therefore, there is a pressing need to synthesize the results across observational, modeling, and theoretical approaches.

This session invites abstract submissions that address the mechanisms, impacts and predictability of climate variability in the Atlantic Ocean. Studies that involve atmospheric and oceanic observations, numerical/statistical modeling, artificial intelligence techniques, and climate theories are welcomed.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger

Keywords: Climate variability; Air/sea interactions; Decadal ocean variability

AI02 Under the Weather: Using Active and Passive Microwave Observations to Study Atmosphere-Ocean Interactions

Organizers:
George Duffy, george.s.duffy@jpl.nasa.gov
Juan Crespo, juan.a.crespo@jpl.nasa.gov
Brent Roberts, jason.b.roberts@nasa.gov
Derek Posselt, Derek.posselt@jpl.nasa.gov

Clouds and precipitation obscure many conventional satellite observations that are used to study ocean surface processes. Storms are a regular event over the ocean surface, so our restricted observing capability under weather events leads to a poorer understanding of ocean surface properties. Recent innovations in hardware technologies and retrieval techniques have resulted in new spaceborne platforms and data products that provide more information under heavy clouds and precipitation. Precipitation radars, such as the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission dual-frequency precipitation radar (DPR) for example, can provide information on ocean surface freshwater fluxes, latent heat transfers from melting snow, and radiative warming from large ice crystals. Observations made at L-band frequencies from passive microwave radiometers and bistatic scatterometry (e.g. the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System, CYGNSS) are providing improved estimates of surface winds and associated turbulent fluxes in all-weather conditions. Emerging techniques in machine learning and improved assimilation capabilities — e.g. weakly and strongly-coupled data assimilation — are further resulting in improved analyses of processes critical to weather and climate. These data allow new investigations of the role of atmosphere-ocean interactions in the development of tropical, extratropical, and polar weather systems, as well as the oceanic response to these events. In this session, we bring together researchers who are using novel satellite observations and techniques to improve our understanding of ocean-atmosphere processes under weather events and their interactions that contribute to oceanic and atmospheric evolution. This session is co-sponsored by the American Meteorological Society's Committee on Air-Sea Interactions.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Remote sensing and electromagnetic processes; Marine meteorology; Ocean observing systems; Air/sea interactions

AI03 Fluxes and Physical Processes Near the Air-Sea Interface: Observations and Modeling

Organizers:
David Ortiz-Suslow, dortizsu@nps.edu
Sophia Brumer, sophia.brumer@ifremer.fr
Luc Deike, ldeike@princeton.edu
Heather Holbach, heather.holbach@noaa.gov

The physical coupling between the atmosphere and ocean regulates the fluxes of momentum, heat, and mass (gas, aerosols, spray, etc.), affecting weather and climate. Upper ocean dynamics and phenomena, particularly ocean surface waves, strongly influence the atmosphere-ocean coupling mechanisms spanning multiple scales and many regimes. We have come a long way in our understanding of air-sea interaction physics, yet significant challenges to and gaps in our understanding remain. There are still many open questions, for example in 1) strongly forced conditions–where intense wave breaking generates high volumes of sea spray and bubbles, and 2) depth-limited domains–where the impacts of a spatially evolving wave field and surface heterogeneity are significant. We invite contributions that expand our understanding of the mechanisms coupling the ocean-atmosphere system, including those addressing the influence of small-scale processes on interfacial fluxes and larger-scale dynamics. Submissions tackling these problems from observational, modeling, and laboratory perspectives are strongly encouraged. The Chairs hope that this session provides a forum for the focused discussion of air-sea interaction physics with input from a diverse array of technical backgrounds and perspectives, including discussion on how to advance the development of physically-based parameterizations to be used by the oceanographic and atmospheric communities. This session is co-sponsored by the American Meteorological Society's Committee on Air-Sea Interaction.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; High Latitude Environments; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Air/sea interactions; Surface waves and tides; Turbulence, diffusion, and mixing processes; Instruments, sensors, techniques

AI04 Extratropical climate variability and change associated with air-sea interactions

Organizers:
Yoshi Sasaki, sasakiyo@sci.hokudai.ac.jp
Rhys Parfitt, rparfitt@fsu.edu
Aixue Hu, ahu@ucar.edu
Noel Keenlyside, noel.keenlyside@gfi.uib.no

It is important to understand regional climate variability and change in the mid-latitudes in the past and future. To this end, we need better knowledge of atmosphere and ocean dynamics and their interactions. The spatial and temporal ranges of regional climate variability and change extend submesoscale processes to inter-basin teleconnections from weather to climate timescales. This session invites contributions on all aspects of extratropical air-sea interactions, related ocean and atmosphere processes, and their predictability through observational, numerical, and theoretical approaches.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Climate variability; Regional climate change; Atmosphere; Western boundary currents

AI05 The role of ocean-atmosphere dynamics in global climate

Organizers:
Robert Jnglin Wills, rcwills@uw.edu
Dillon Amaya, Dillon.Amaya@colorado.edu
Elizabeth Maroon, emaroon@wisc.edu
Natalie Burls, nburls@gmu.edu
Kaushal Gianchandani, kaushal.g@mail.huji.ac.il

Coupled ocean-atmosphere dynamics play a critical role in the climate response to external forcing and in internal climate variability across a range of timescales. Ocean coupling moderates the response of the intertropical convergence zone to energetic perturbations, helps to communicate changes in Arctic sea ice to low latitudes, and modifies the spatial pattern of global warming. Ocean coupling also plays a role in climate variability at timescales ranging from inter-seasonal (e.g., the North Atlantic Oscillation), to interannual (e.g., the El Niño-Southern Oscillation) and decadal (e.g., Atlantic multidecadal variability), though there is still debate on the exact nature of this coupling. We invite observational, modeling, and theoretical studies on the role of coupled ocean-atmosphere dynamics in global climate, for example:

1. Hierarchical modeling studies to determine the role of ocean coupling,
2. Mechanistic studies of climate variability at inter-seasonal to multi-decadal timescales,
3. Studies of the processes controlling the spatial pattern of ocean warming.

This session is co-sponsored by the AMS Air-Sea Interaction Committee.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger

Keywords: Climate dynamics; Climate variability; Air/sea interactions; Decadal ocean variability

AI06 Tropical Cyclone-Ocean Interactions: From Weather to Climate

Organizers:
II LIN, iilin@as.ntu.edu.tw
Karthik Balaguru, Karthik.Balaguru@pnnl.gov
Gregory R Foltz, gregory.foltz@noaa.gov
Christina M. Patricola, cmp28@iastate.edu
Chunzai Wang, cwang@scsio.ac.cn

Tropical Cyclone (TC)-ocean interactions are critical for TC intensity change because the ocean is the energy source for TCs. Air-sea interaction processes involve energy and momentum exchange between TCs and the ocean and are important on both TC (i.e., short-term) and climate (i.e., long-term) timescales. On shorter timescales, TC-ocean interactions are important for intensity forecasting. The intense winds of TCs significantly impact sea surface temperature (SST) through entrainment mixing and upwelling. The sea state, including waves and spray, also depends on wind speed and affects air-sea enthalpy and momentum exchange. There are many open questions regarding the impact of TCs on ocean biogeochemistry and biological productivity. On longer climate timescales, how the future ocean will evolve has strong implications for TC activity projections, with important societal implications. Meanwhile, natural inter-annual (e.g., ENSO) and inter-decadal (e.g., the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation) variability and global warming also affect the ocean, TCs, and their interactions. This session welcomes submissions under the broad subject of TC-ocean physical and biogeochemical interactions from weather to climate timescales. It intends to provide a friendly platform for interactions among oceanographers, atmospheric scientists, and climatologists in this multi-disciplinary field.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Air/sea interactions

AI08 Towards an understanding of how multiscale ocean-atmosphere interactions modulate fluxes in the air-sea boundary layer

Organizers:
Alex Ayet, alex.ayet@normalesup.org
Ana Beatriz Villas Boas, avillasboas@ucsd.edu
Delphine Hypolite, dhypolite@atmos.ucla.edu
Nicholas Pizzo, npizzo@ucsd.edu

Recent advances in observational and numerical capabilities have highlighted the importance of resolving coupled dynamical and thermodynamical processes in atmospheric and oceanic boundary layers to properly characterize air-sea interactions and air-sea fluxes in coupled weather and climate models. These processes cover a wide range of spatiotemporal scales, and challenges remain in understanding how these different scales interact together and how boundary layer processes should be parameterized in coupled wave-ocean-atmosphere models. At the surface, gravity and capillary waves mediate exchanges of momentum, heat, and gases between the ocean and the atmosphere, which are affected by surface wave variability, wave breaking, and wind-wave-current interactions. These small-scale processes modulate dynamical and thermodynamical properties of the atmospheric and oceanic boundary layers. Thus, physics-based parameterizations of air-sea interactions should explicitly consider this multiscale complexity.

This session aims at building a multiscale understanding of coupled air-sea processes, and at discussing how these processes can be better observed and parameterized in weather and climate models. We welcome theoretical, observational, and numerical modelling studies that focus on improving our understanding of boundary layer processes. Studies leveraging resources from in situ, airborne, and spaceborne programs to improve our physical understanding of air-sea fluxes are highly encouraged. We also welcome submissions that explore novel data-driven techniques to represent these complex interactions.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Air/sea interactions; Surface waves and tides; Upper ocean and mixed layer processes; Turbulence, diffusion, and mixing processes

AI09 Tropical Pacific process study experiments: Improved understanding through observations, modeling and data assimilation

Organizers:
Anna-Lena Deppenmeier, deppenme@ucar.edu
Deepak Cherian, dcherian@ucar.edu
William Kessler, william.s.kessler@noaa.gov
Alma Vazquez-Lule, alma.vazquez-lule@noaa.gov
Aneesh Subramanian, aneeshcs@colorado.edu

The Tropical Pacific Observing System (TPOS) has been delivering measurements to the international science community and national and international prediction centers since the 1980s. TPOS also serves stakeholders invested in monitoring the Earth's carbon inventory, sustainable fisheries, and climate change. The TPOS 2020 Project, in its review of the observing system, provides recommendations for process study experiments in the Tropical Pacific over the next decade, taking advantage of emerging technologies, new platforms and novel techniques. This session seeks presentations from both modeling and observing communities that inform prospective process study experiments, and translate observational insight to improved modeling of the lower atmosphere and upper ocean in the Tropical Pacific. We also invite discussions on advances in modeling capabilities and field campaign capabilities applicable to TPOS process studies, the use of TPOS data and products for improving understanding the coupled boundary layer. We encourage ideas for potential new contributions to the TPOS and the improvements it could realize for modeling and forecasting communities and other stakeholders.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Ocean observing systems; Air/sea interactions; Upper ocean and mixed layer processes; ENSO

For More Information: https://tpos2020.org/

AI10 Global atmosphere-ocean coupled simulations at km-scale resolution and the application to the design of future satellite missions that focus on surface winds and ocean currents

Organizers:
Jinbo Wang, jinbo.wang@jpl.nasa.gov
Hector S. Torres, hector.torres.gutierrez@jpl.nasa.gov
Ping Chang, ping@tamu.edu
Niklas Schneider, nschneid@hawaii.edu

Mesoscale SST anomalies are known in recent years to have a profound influence on atmospheric circulation. As an example, ocean eddies in the Kuroshio Extension can remotely affect rainfalls over the U.S. West Coast through energizing atmospheric storms. In this context, global atmosphere-ocean-coupled simulations with km-scale grid spacing have emerged in the last three years, such as those from the DYAMOND initiative. The objectives are a deeper understanding of the nature of air-sea coupling and their influences on atmospheric storm tracks, ocean eddies, equatorial currents and their feedback on the global atmospheric circulation. Analyses of these groundbreaking simulations can provide insights into the design and observational requirements for the future satellite missions, such as US WaCM, European STREAM, and Chinese OSCOM that focus on, but not limited to, ocean surface currents. We are on the brink of obtaining new measurements that could revolutionize our understanding of the dynamics of the air-sea coupled processes. The purpose of this session is to (1) discuss the new findings from these state-of-the-art global coupled simulations, as well as from relevant large eddy simulations and regional coupled ones, and (2) make recommendations on the design of future surface-current satellite missions and their science applications.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Numerical modeling; Air/sea interactions; CurrentsInstruments, sensors, techniques

AI11 Subtropical Air-Sea Interaction

Organizers:
Malte Stuecker, stuecker@hawaii.edu
Ning Zhao, zhaoning@jamstec.go.jp
Masami Nonaka, nona@jamstec.go.jp
Niklas Schneider, nschneid@hawaii.edu

Subtropical sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTs) are of modest amplitude compared to their counterparts in the tropics and mid-latitudes. These anomalies, however, can affect atmospheric deep convection where mean SSTs are high and low-level cloud cover where mean SSTs are cool. Thus, subtropical SST anomalies are essential for the two-way coupling between the tropical and extratropical regions. This session invites observational, theoretical, and numerical studies on all aspects of subtropical air-sea interactions and related oceanic and atmospheric variability. These include, but are not limited to, heat and fresh water budgets, predictability, teleconnections, relationships to climate modes and inter basin variability, as well as relationships with extreme events such as marine heat waves.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change

Keywords: Climate and interannual variability; Air/sea interactions

Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry

CB01 Linking the ice, land, and ocean systems in the Gulf of Alaska: Collaborative research across scientific disciplines

Organizers:
Jordan Jenckes, jjenckes2@alaska.edu
Josianne Haag, jhaag6@alaska.edu
Lee Ann Munk, lamunk@alaska.edu
Brenda Konar, bhkonar@alaska.edu

The Gulf of Alaska (GoA) watershed covers nearly 420,000 km2 and a majority of Alaska’s population resides within this region. Communities in the GoA rely on healthy coastal ecosystems for economic activities, recreation, and subsistence. Nearshore marine habitats are vital for many economic and culturally important marine species. Coastal watersheds that discharge freshwater via surface water or as coastal groundwater directly influence these nearshore ecosystems. The composition of water sourced from glacial melt carries important organic and inorganic nutrients. However, as glaciers continue to recede, the chemical and physical properties of this freshwater will change. This can shift the relative magnitudes of nutrient discharges to favor other sources, such as groundwater, which play a critical role in water budgets and biogeochemical cycling across a wide range of coastal systems. There are limited large-scale studies that attempt to link the ice, land, and ocean connection. A distinctive feature of this type of research is the interdisciplinary approach needed to investigate links between land and ocean processes. The primary goal of this scientific session is to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers exploring the land and ocean interface specifically in the GoA. Several formats will be provided for individuals and teams to share their work, including in person and virtual talks with time for discussion, posters, and eLightning talks. Ideally, the session will highlight work that spans disciplines and illustrates how connecting across scientific fields enhances research and broadens the questions that can be addressed.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; High Latitude Environments

Keywords: Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling; Oceans; North America

CB02 Submarine groundwater discharge – a global phenomenon with local effects

Organizers:
Henrietta Dulai, hdulaiov@hawaii.edu
Natasha Dimova, ntdimova@ua.edu
Nils Moosdorf, nils.moosdorf@leibniz-zmt.de

Groundwater flow across the land-ocean interface greatly affects coastal geochemistry and it is vital for groundwater-dependent ecosystems in coastal and shelf settings such as embayments, ponds, anchialine pools, wetlands and even offshore regions. While this process has been quite well characterized in many sites locally and to some degree also globally, there are still many unknowns about submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) on both local and regional scales. This session will focus broadly on the biogeochemical effects of SGD at the land-ocean interface. We welcome contributions from studies focusing on deciphering the underlying hydrological controls and associated chemical fluxes of SGD, including processes in the subterranean estuary and expected hydrological and chemical effects of climate change.

Multiple studies have demonstrated the role of SGD as a bottom-up driver of food webs, source of eutrophication and pollution, coastal water resource, and as a resource of cultural and societal relevance. Yet, we struggle to understand the details of the many underlying contributing effects and drivers of SGD and resulting coastal biogeochemistry. We hope to incite discussion on the most recent advances in the field and identify needs for future research directions.

Cross listed Tracks: Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Coastal processes; Marine pollution; Food webs, structure, and dynamics; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling

CB03 The carbon cycle across the land-ocean continuum: scientific advances and insights for blue carbon policy

Organizers:
Judith Drexler, jdrexler@usgs.gov
Kanchan Maiti, kmaiti@lsu.edu
Steve Crooks, steve.crooks@silvestrum.com
Wei-Jun Cai, wcai@udel.edu

Ecosystems along the land-ocean continuum have long been recognized as important components of the global carbon cycle, but their hydrologic connectivity has often been overlooked. This continuum contains a number of “blue carbon” systems (i.e., mangroves, seagrasses, kelp beds, coastal marshes, and sedimentary ocean environments) that have manageable and significant carbon stocks and fluxes. Climate change and human perturbation along this continuum have the potential to alter the carbon cycle through changes in weathering, river discharge, vegetation, and organic matter production, transport, and storage. Oceanographers, hydrologists, ecologists, wetland scientists and modelers often have varied viewpoints regarding the importance of processes occurring along the land-ocean continuum, how they might change in the future, and what implications they have for blue carbon policies seeking to mitigate carbon pollution. This session aims to bring together these diverse communities to advance our understanding of these interconnected processes and, in so doing, inform blue carbon policy and practice. Contributions are encouraged that address field-based, satellite-based, and numerical modeling studies in wetlands, estuaries, and the coastal/open ocean. Of particular interest is research focused on mechanisms and/or blue carbon policy implications of lateral carbon transport, biogeochemical cycling, air-sea carbon exchange, and sediment carbon burial and source determination.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade

Keywords: Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling; Carbon cycling; SedimentationScience policy

CB04 PACE, GLIMR and SBG: Synergy across Future NASA Missions for Hyperspectral Remote Sensing of Coastal and Inland Waters

Organizers:
Kevin Turpie, kturpie@umbc.edu
Laura Lorenzoni, laura.lorenzoni@nasa.gov
Maria Tzortziou, mt3123@columbia.edu
Wesley Moses, wesley.moses@nrl.navy.mil

Coastal and inland waters and their watersheds play a critical role in global biogeochemical cycles, water quality, biodiversity, and vital to human health, safety, and economy. Their processes shape and sustain marine and terrestrial habitats, such as wetlands, fisheries, coral reefs, aquatic vegetation, and plankton. These habitats provide many ecosystem services and societal benefits on which most humans depend. Threats to these resources stemming from climate change and increasing human pressure demand an urgent assessment. Remote sensing science provides critical tools for large-scale observations of these important systems. The advent of imaging spectroscopy (or hyperspectral imaging) is expected to be a transformational addition to that toolbox. NASA is developing the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE), Geostationary Littoral Imaging and Monitoring Radiometer (GLIMR), and Surface Biology and Geology (SBG) missions to place hyperspectral sensors in orbit this decade. These missions benefit from international collaboration, such as between SBG and ESA’s Copernicus Hyperspectral Imaging Mission (CHIME). Each mission offers different temporal and spatial sampling resolutions, and combined support spectroscopic techniques over the large range of scales characteristic of coastal and inland aquatic processes. This session explores collaborative developments in combining satellite imaging spectroscopy across these missions to better understand coastal and inland aquatic systems. New common algorithms are being evaluated to fully exploit spectroscopic information from these sensors. Surface and airborne data collection and data from simulations are being used to develop or evaluate new spectral methods. Development of calibration and validation capabilities across missions are leading to new innovations, especially intercalibration. Together, these efforts lead to a new observational constellation for coastal and inland waters.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Fish and Fisheries; High Latitude Environments; Islands and Reefs; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Remote sensing; Data assimilation, integration and fusion; International collaboration; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling

CB05 Advancing Water Quality Monitoring and Forecasting in Coastal and Inland Waters

Organizers:
Guangming Zheng, guangming.zheng@noaa.gov
Stephanie Schollaert Uz, stephanie.uz@nasa.gov
Steve Greb, srgreb@wisc.edu

Water is an increasingly threatened resource, particularly the quality of coastal and inland waters due to increased population growth, urbanization, and climate change. Coastal zones - linking aquatic, terrestrial, atmospheric, and anthropogenic domains - are significantly impacted by dynamic and complex processes. Timely, accurate, and consistent scientific-based assessments, monitoring and forecasting of water quality are needed from global, regional, and local scales. This session solicits contributions addressing the end-to-end value chain for coastal and inland water quality. This includes new and improved physical, biogeochemical, and ecological observations and data products (remote and in situ), data assimilation and forecasts, and the synergistic generation of fit-for-purpose water quality products and indicators that integrate multiple sources of information for water quality managers and other stakeholders. In particular, developmental and operational activities that couple products across the land-water interface are solicited, e.g. observations, models, as well as information delivery systems and decision-making tools to enhance user knowledge. This session advances the goals and objectives of the international AquaWatch Initiative, being developed under the Group for Earth Observations (GEO), including the development of water quality monitoring and forecasting services that could support the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG-6: Clean Water and SDG-14: Life Below Water.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy

Keywords: Machine learning; Geospatial; Remote sensing and electromagnetic processes; Marine pollution

CB06 Going to the extreme: Biogeochemical responses of coastal ecosystems to storms and fires

Organizers:
Joey Crosswell, joey.crosswell@csiro.au
Karl Kaiser, kaiserk@tamug.edu
Sasha Kramer, sasha.kramer@lifesci.ucsb.edu
Alan Roebuck, alan.roebuck@pnnl.gov

Storms and fires are disrupting coastal ecosystems. These extreme events alter the hydrologic, nutrient, and carbon inputs to coastal waters by modifying the landscape and mobilizing stored materials in their watersheds. Recent reports of increasingly severe precipitation linked to tropical, extratropical storms and extended periods of drought enabling expansive fires are changing our understanding of how coastal ecosystems are modified by such extreme events and how they respond, with the latter having important implications for coastal carbon and nutrient cycling, habitat and water quality, sustainability and resiliency of coastal communities.

New ideas and perspectives are required to understand how the magnitude of these episodic pulse disturbances are important amidst the press disturbances of sea level rise, warming, and coastal acidification and hypoxia. What are the interactions between the pulses and presses? How are they changing our quantification of key coastal ecosystem processes? What are the key thresholds and feedbacks associated with episodic disturbance, particularly those that may not be intuitive? Answers to these questions are important for the representation of coastal environments in Earth system models and for management of coastal resources.

This session will explore these new ideas and perspectives by soliciting contributions from observational, experimental, and modeling studies that provide insight into episodic and chronic changes that occur to coastal ecosystems from these events, their relation to key features of the coastal system and its connected watershed, and regional to global climate change. We specifically invite studies showing the changes to processes influencing vertical and lateral fluxes of carbon and nutrients between land, air, and water that arise from storms and fires.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Impacts of global change; Coastal processes; Physical and biogeochemical interactions; Instruments, sensors, techniques

CB07 Estuaries as hot-spots of microbial carbon and nitrogen cycling

Organizers:
Iris Anderson, iris@vims.edu
Mark Brush, brush@vims.edu
Kimberly Reece, kreece@vims.edu
Bongkeun Song, songb@vims.edu

Estuaries and other coastal systems are hot spots of global carbon and nitrogen cycling, where land-based inputs of organic matter are transformed numerous times by microbial processes before being buried or transmitted to the coastal ocean. In addition to these allochthonous inputs, numerous sources of autochthonous organic carbon including blooms of phytoplankton, microphytobenthos, and macroalgae provide additional carbon for microbial processing, burial, export, and support of the food web. Microbial processing of this organic matter is subject to control by regular seasonal cycling, episodic events including storms, and long-term changes resulting from global climate change, anthropogenic nutrient inputs, and numerous other stressors. The introduction of aquaculture to many estuaries and the increasing appearance of harmful algal blooms have as yet unknown impacts on microbial processing of carbon and nitrogen in these systems. This session will showcase studies demonstrating water column and benthic microbial community responses to natural and anthropogenic stresses, and their role in carbon and nitrogen cycling including the degradation of organic matter, net ecosystem metabolism, denitrification, nitrification, and DNRA. We welcome contributions spanning a variety of coastal ecosystems, covering a wide range of latitude, and using a variety of tools including observations, experiments, energy and material budgets, and modeling. Our goal is to synthesize our current understanding, identify gaps in our knowledge, and identify new areas for investigation.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Estuarine processes; Coastal processes; Carbon cycling; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling

CB08 Biogeochemical dynamics at the terrestrial-aquatic interface

Organizers:
Peter Regier, peter.regier@pnnl.gov
Nick Ward, nicholas.ward@pnnl.gov
Allison Myers-Pigg, allison.myers-pigg@pnnl.gov
Alan Roebuck, alan.roebuck@pnnl.gov

The terrestrial-aquatic interface (TAI), where land meets water, defines the exchange of energy and materials between systems and plays a critical role in global carbon, nutrient, sediment, and pollutant cycles. This interface manifests in soils as groundwater and porewater gradients along hillslopes, in streams and rivers as riparian/hyporheic zones or floodplains, along the coasts of lakes and estuaries, and as wetlands. The factors governing TAI function, including saturation driven by precipitation or tidal patterns, soil/sediment characteristics, and watershed geomorphology can vary dramatically through time, across space, and between or within ecosystems. Due to this complexity, the function and drivers of the TAI remain poorly represented in Earth system models. In this session, we aim to unite a wide range of research relevant to the TAI, from freshwater to estuarine. We particularly encourage studies that bridge across scientific disciplines (e.g., biogeochemistry, hydrology, ecology, geomorphology, etc.) and/or integrate molecular scale information with catchment-scale processes across spatial and temporal scales. Our goal is to gain a stronger understanding of the state of TAI science, with emphasis on how these interfaces are responding to global change. We see this session as an opportunity to unite across scientific domains in identifying current limitations and key growth areas to help guide and focus future TAI research.

Cross listed Tracks: Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling; Earth system modeling; Water cycles; Instruments and techniques

CB09 Trans- and interdisciplinary connections in tropical coastal and estuarine processes

Organizers:
Yoshimi Rii, shimi@hawaii.edu
Rosanna Alegado, ralegado@hawaii.edu
Henrietta Dulai, hdulaiov@hawaii.edu
Craig Nelson, cen@hawaii.edu
Becca Lensing, blensing@hawaii.edu

Estuaries are one of the world’s most dynamic and resilient ecosystems. The convergence of fresh and saltwater results in complex nearshore hydrological and biogeochemical processes, increased productivity and biodiversity. This session seeks to highlight interdisciplinary projects utilizing a diversity of tools to further holistic understandings of estuarine processes and biodiversity. We welcome innovative studies that intersect multiple disciplines, such as linkages between genomic and environmental DNA data with water and sediment biogeochemistry, temporal and spatial patterns in hydrology linked with biodiversity and productivity, as well as those that weave conventional scientific methods with observations and engagement with Indigenous and other knowledge systems. We seek abstracts focused on tropical estuaries, which face specific climate challenges such as salt water intrusion into groundwater, warmer temperature and eutrophication on nearshore reefs, and increased stratification and its effects on nutrient dynamics and plankton processes. We will prioritize watershed-based studies that examine anthropogenic and ecological influences on and by estuarine ecosystems. Our discussions will focus on how interdisciplinary studies can support and inform decision making by coastal resource managers and Indigenous communities in tropical estuarine ecosystems.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Fish and Fisheries; Islands and Reefs; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Coastal processes; Estuarine processes; Microbiology and microbial ecology

CB10 High-latitude, seasonally-contrasting, estuaries

Organizers:
Alfonso Mucci, alfonso.mucci@mcgill.ca
Ludovic Pascal, ludovic_pascal@uqar.ca
Connie Lovejoy, connie.covejoy@bio.ulaval.ca

Estuaries are sensitive ecosystems located between the continents and the oceans. Under the influence of tides and seasons, they are subjected to important fluctuations of the physico-chemical processes that impact on the water properties as well as the fluxes of solutes and organic matter to the oceans. Estuaries are generally characterized by productive but relatively simple biological trophic networks. Most estuarine studies were carried out in tropical or temperate regions. This bias is readily understandable as the global freshwater water discharge to the oceans is dominated by large, low-latitude river estuaries (e.g., Amazon, Congo, Orinoco, Changjiang, Mississippi). Furthermore, their large particulate loads amplify the non-conservative behaviour of solutes during estuarine mixing. On the other hand, prominent land masses and many large river estuaries (e.g., Mackenzie, St. Lawrence, Amur, Yukon, Santa Cruz, Lena) are found at high latitudes. These rivers discharge large volumes of freshwater to the Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, impacting global ocean elemental budgets and the thermohaline circulation. These high-latitude river estuaries are subjected to contrasting seasonal forcings, including the presence of an ice cover during the winter, glacier melt and spring freshets. Because of logistical constraints (e.g., ice cover, strong currents), the great majority of studies in these estuaries have been carried during the summer season and only provide a partial account of elemental fluxes and processes that modulate them. Accordingly, our understanding of physical, chemical, geological and biological processes and their impact on elemental fluxes to the ocean remain limited during the winter season.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; High Latitude Environments; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Coastal processes; Estuarine processes; Water massesGeneral or miscellaneous

CB11 Linking microbes and biogeochemical cycles where the land meets the water using ‘omics and beyond

Organizers:
Anna Rasmussen, arasmuss@stanford.edu
Justin Podowski, jpodowski@uchicago.edu

Bacteria, archaea, viruses and unicellular plankton are key players in biogeochemical transformations due to their diverse metabolisms. Nitrogen, sulfur, and carbon compounds can serve as electron sources and sinks for microbial metabolisms leading to complex nutrient cycling dependent on microbial metabolic potential, activity, and environmental conditions. With the rapid increase in sequencing power and use of ‘omics techniques, we can now connect the metabolic potential and activity of microbes to rates of biogeochemical transformations. Understanding the interaction between microbial metabolism, activity, and biogeochemical cycling is particularly important where the land meets water as these systems are prone to anthropogenic disturbances such as excess nutrient input, pollution, physical alteration, flow regulation, etc. In order to understand and predict how lakes, rivers, estuaries, and coastal regions will respond to and evolve with increasing anthropogenic disturbances and climate change, more thorough investigation of microbial metabolism and its links to biogeochemical cycling is needed. We invite studies which investigate microbial metabolism and use ‘omics techniques (metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics, etc) to link microbial metabolism to biogeochemical transformation (nitrogen, carbon, sulfur, phosphorus, etc) in lakes, rivers, estuaries and coastal systems. Studies combining ‘omics with stable isotope probing are especially encouraged. We also encourage early career scientists, scientists from minority serving institutions, and scientists from underrepresented minorities to submit to this session.

Keywords: Microbiology and microbial ecology; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling

CB12 Coastal Acidification in a Multistressor Ocean

Organizers:
Katie Shamberger, katie.shamberger@tamu.edu
Andrea Kealoha, andreake@hawaii.edu
Simone Alin, simone.r.alin@noaa.gov
Marjorie Friedrichs, marjy@vims.edu
Claudia Mazur, cmazur@bu.edu

Ocean acidification refers to the increase in seawater carbon dioxide (CO2) and accompanying decrease in pH, calcium carbonate saturation state (Ω), and carbonate ion concentration driven by oceanic uptake of anthropogenic CO2 from the atmosphere. Ocean acidification, in concert with other climate change impacts (e.g. warming, deoxygenation, changing current patterns), is altering the biogeochemical cycling of the global ocean, with numerous negative impacts on marine organisms, ecosystems, and associated ecosystem services. In addition to these global stressors, the coastal ocean is subject to a wide range of local anthropogenic stressors that can exacerbate or ameliorate acidification of coastal waters. For example, land-use changes can alter freshwater input, nutrient loading, and sedimentation, leading to changes in pelagic and benthic production, which can cause concurrent hypoxia and acidification, and affect seawater CO2, pH, and Ω. Further, global and local processes interact to affect coastal acidification in ways that are currently difficult to predict. For example, changes in precipitation patterns can alter carbon cycling through changes in freshwater input to the coastal ocean. Increasing tropical storm intensity and precipitation can enhance delivery of land-based nutrients, causing changes in biological production. Shifts in large scale wind patterns may affect stratification, coastal upwelling, and bottom water acidification. Ocean warming causes coral bleaching events that alter the metabolism and carbon cycling of coral reef ecosystems. This session explores the multitude of ways global and local stressors combine to affect estuarine and coastal carbon cycling and acidification, and the current and future implications for coastal ocean ecosystems. We welcome observational, numerical modeling, and experimental laboratory and field studies from all coastal ocean regions, with particular interest in calcifying ecosystems and interacting stressors.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Islands and Reefs; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling; Impacts of global change; Carbon cycling

CB13 Acidification in the Gulf of Mexico – chemical changes, biological and ecological responses

Organizers:
Xinping Hu, xinping.hu@tamucc.edu
Emily Osborne, emily.osborne@noaa.gov
Leticia Barbero, leticia.barbero@noaa.gov
Steven DiMarco, sdimarco@tamu.edu

Ocean acidification has been extensively investigated across the open ocean to estuarine environment continuum over the past two decades. However, ocean acidification studies in the Gulf of Mexico, the largest marginal sea in North America, have been relatively sparse and constrained mostly to limited shallow water environments. Major region-specific unknowns still remain with respect to understanding the biological sensitivity and ecosystem response of the Gulf system to ocean acidification, particularly in combination with other environmental stressors. Acidification in the Gulf of Mexico is likely influenced and modulated by a number of environmental factors and biogeochemical processes, including but not limited to large-scale climate variations affecting physical ocean circulation, freshwater and nutrient delivery from rivers, subterranean groundwater discharge, and extreme weather events. The vastness of the Gulf of Mexico region and number of remaining scientific unknowns suggests that international and interdisciplinary partnerships are needed to achieve a system-wide understanding of ocean acidification ranging from estuaries to the open ocean and from the sea surface to ocean depth. This session invites submissions that utilize field and modelling techniques to explore ocean acidification as well as studies focusing on its biological and ecological impacts in the Gulf of Mexico. As the Gulf of Mexico is bordered by three countries, submissions from Cuba and Mexico are especially welcomed.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Marginal and semi-enclosed seas; Carbon cycling; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling; Marine inorganic chemistry

CB14 Transformation and Fate of Terrestrial Organic Matter at the Land-Ocean Interface and Beyond

Organizers:
Michael Seidel, m.seidel@uni-oldenburg.de
Nicholas D. Ward, nickdward@gmail.com
Sairah Y. Malkin, smalkin@umces.edu
Sasha Wagner, wagnes3@rpi.edu

Coastal ecosystems represent biogeochemically dynamic links between terrestrial and oceanic carbon reservoirs. The apparent mismatch between riverine carbon fluxes and oceanic carbon stocks suggests that a substantial portion of terrestrial organic carbon is more reactive than previously thought and/or is stored in coastal systems prior to export to the open ocean. Amount and composition of terrestrial particulate and dissolved organic matter delivered to coastal margins is a function of hydrology, geomorphology, and land use. The fate of terrestrial organic molecules is further modulated by their intrinsic and extrinsic reactivity, spatiotemporal distribution, and residence time in coastal environments. Due to climate change, extreme events (e.g., major storms and snowmelt, droughts, wildfire) are becoming more frequent, further impacting the export of terrestrial organic carbon from landscapes and its subsequent remineralization/storage over short and long timescales. These biogeochemical cycles remain poorly understood and yet are critical for balancing carbon budgets. In this session, we seek to bring together research that investigates inputs, alteration, and/or fate of terrestrial organic matter along the land-ocean continuum. We invite contributions from diverse areas of carbon biogeochemistry that cut across ecosystem boundaries and incorporate studies from a wide range of spatiotemporal scales and settings. Research assessing biotic and abiotic drivers altering the molecular organic matter composition are welcome. Presentations that examine mechanisms underlying observed patterns in distribution or rates of particulate and dissolved organic matter transformations, their linkage to nutrient cycling, formation of recalcitrant organic matter, and microbial remineralization processes are particularly encouraged.

Cross listed Tracks: Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Air/Sea Interactions

Keywords: Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling; Coastal processes; Carbon cycling; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling

CB15 Application of Remote Sensing to Societally Important Regions: Coastal, Estuarine, Tropical and Polar Waters”

Organizers:
Jorge Vazquez, jorge.vazquez@jpl.nasa.gov
Jose Gomez-Valdes, jgomez@cicese.mx
Paul DiGiacomo, paul.digiacomo@noaa.gov
Marouan Bouali, marouanbouali@gmail.com

Remote sensing from satellites, sub-orbital and ground platforms provides valuable data for management of regions with great socio-economic importance, including coastal, estuarine, tropical, and polar waters. There has been a tremendous growth in the availability of sub-kilometer resolution data with active and passive observations spanning UV to microwave, resulting from new sensors as well as advances in scientific data and information processing techniques (e.g., artificial intelligence/machine learning).

In addition to current remote sensing applications in these critical regions, the session seeks contributions that demonstrate and prototype evolving and emerging capabilities in support of improved understanding and applications within these high-priority regions. Our particular focus is on satellite remote sensing to characterize (sub)-mesoscale processes and features as they relate to coastal waters for fisheries, hazards, inclusive of multiple remote sensing data sets and field observations, as well as coupled modeling and data assimilations approaches to better resolve and track this scale of features in space (local to EEZs) and over-time scales ranging from hourly to interannual. Thus, this includes satellite time series (e.g., ocean color, synthetic aperture radar) also allowing for a more holistic spatially explicit study of these regions and their impact on long-term ecological changes.

Likewise, transboundary (e.g., land-sea interface) and trans-disciplinary (e.g., physical and biological/biogeochemical; environmental & social science data) approaches are greatly encouraged, as well as studies that highlight potential technology transfer from developed to developing regions. Stakeholders of interest include researchers and applications developers, as well as managers and decision-makers within these regions of interest to help assess and better address their data user needs and requirements.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Fish and Fisheries; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management

Keywords: Ocean observing systems; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling; Decision making under uncertainty

CB16 Advancing our understanding of biogeochemical coupling with models and observations in estuaries and coastal waters

Organizers:
Jessie Turner, jturner@uconn.edu
Jeremy Testa, jtesta@umces.edu

Biogeochemical processes in coastal waters and estuaries depend largely on the continuum between shallow-water habitats and contiguous deep, pelagic environments. While numerical models have increased in resolution to better constrain coastal biogeochemical processes, more work is needed to capture variability along the dynamic deep-to-shallow water continuum. Shallow-water habitats can be a significant mediator of land-sea material fluxes, but can also internally generate material or chemical conditions that are communicated to adjacent deep habitats. Residence time, stratification, and wind-driven sediment resuspension may vary substantially from shallow vs. deep waters even when these habitats border one another, and thus have different relative impacts on biogeochemical processes. Biological communities and their relative contribution to nutrient and oxygen cycling are also different across depth gradients. The need to better understand and quantify interactions between these linked systems is of increasing importance in light of sustained anthropogenic impacts on these processes and the key role that cross-habitat fluxes play in generating and distributing the consequences of harmful algal blooms, hypoxia, eutrophication, coastal acidification, and associated impacts on filter feeding bivalves and submerged aquatic vegetation. We invite modeling, theoretical, and observational (in situ and remote sensing), investigations that target shallow-to-deep water connections in coastal systems. Common themes among different regions will likely emerge, such that the community can benefit by sharing experiences and results. Of interest are interdisciplinary topics including but not limited to: transformation of materials at the land-sea interface, feedbacks between physical and biological processes, multiple-model comparisons, habitat suitability models, benthic-pelagic coupling investigations, physical-biogeochemical modeling studies, and applications to regional management priorities. There is also interest in studies that work toward quantifying the spatial resolution needed to effectively sample and model these complex cross-habitat linkages.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling; Coastal processesEcosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling

Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes

CP01 Protecting Coastlines Using Nature-Based Solutions

Organizers:
Borja Reguero, breguero@ucsc.edu
Curt Storlazzi, cstorlazzi@usgs.gov
Ap Van Dongeren, ap.vandongeren@deltares.nl
Ryan Lowe, ryan.lowe@uwa.edu.au

Storms represent the most common and costly natural hazard globally, especially in coastal, low-lying areas. Communities are increasingly looking for effective and suitable measures to mitigate coastal hazards and adapt to climate risks. Coastal ecosystems such as reefs, beaches, dunes, mangroves, and wetlands can provide an effective first line of defense against these flooding and erosion hazards. However, these protection services are disappearing as many of these ecosystems continue to be lost at alarming rates globally. Although both the public and private sector acknowledge the role of ecosystems in reducing coastal risk, measures to quantify their effectiveness to reduce flooding and erosion and their suitability for local environments is still lacking, certainly compared to conventional coastal protection structures. A better understanding of the hydrodynamics, morphodynamics, and ecology across spatial and temporal scales is critical for informing and advancing new ecosystem-based solutions. This session aims to evaluate the role of coastal ecosystems and restoration projects to mitigate coastal hazards by exploring the dynamic connections between ecosystem health and status, geophysical processes, environmental changes, and the evolution of coastlines. We encourage site-specific studies, regional investigations, modeling studies both on the storm event scale and long-term, and efforts towards multi-disciplinary and integrated approaches to understanding the current state and future of the role of natural and restored coastal ecosystems on the protection of adjacent coastlines. Presentations that use new and experimental techniques that may improve or change the way coastal ecosystems are valued for their hazard risk reduction potential are also encouraged.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Islands and Reefs; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Oceans; Nearshore processes; Hydrodynamic modeling; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling

CP02 Wave impact on coastal infrastructures, ecosystems, and communities in the changing climate

Organizers:
Yaprak Onat, yaprak.onat@uconn.edu
Oceana Francis, oceanaf@hawaii.edu
Silvia Gremes Cordero, silvia.gremes.cordero@noaa.gov
Serena Lee, serena.lee@griffith.edu.au

Defining the coastal exposure of the shorelines is challenging due to the uncertainty in climate change impact on waves and in identifying the contributing factors that affect the susceptibility of the region. These problems worsen with recurred extreme wave runup and overtopping due to sea-level rise. Trends in wave variability and sea-level rise need to be estimated to prepare the coastal infrastructure and ecosystem services to cope with flooded areas. As the sea levels rise, the nonlinearity of the waves, topographic differences, downscaling needs, interactions with ecosystem, and overtopping estimations of the infrastructure, geospatial data quality, and wave runup processes should be considered. There is a need to integrate recent developments regarding numerical analysis and computational modeling with in-situ observations into a collaborative network of disaster preparedness. To better understand and prepare for such coastal hazards in a changing environment, updated studies in:

• Coastal wave field variability and its interactions with coastal infrastructure, ecosystem, and communities by creating a framework for integrating climate change models into ocean modeling,
• Coastal Modeling improvements and integrated in-situ measurements,
• High wave impact on the vulnerability need to be examined.

In this session, we propose sharing modeling challenges and solutions to develop community-saving strategies and disaster management. Relevant topics can include studies related to:

• Wave modeling in different scales and in-situ measurement validations
• Assumptions or creative methods for time-consuming modeling approaches
• High energy wave impacts on infrastructure adaptation and ecosystems
• Community or new technology integration on the wave measurements to improve coastal modeling
• Wave climate impacts on coastal processes and coastal risk evaluation
• Sea level rise projection impact on coastal and ocean waves

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Islands and Reefs; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Hydrodynamic modeling; Surface waves and tides; Nearshore processes; Instruments, sensors, techniques

CP03 Nearshore Processes

Organizers:
Julia Fiedler, jfiedler@ucsd.edu
Dylan Anderson, danders5@ncsu.edu
Derek Grimes, dgrimes@ucsd.edu
Blair Johnson, blairjohnson@utexas.edu
Marie-Pierre Delisle, mariepierredelisle@gmail.com

The nearshore region is the transition zone from land to the open ocean. This region spans drastically different dynamical regimes with varying roles of waves, wind, tides, buoyancy, and morphology. The vulnerability of the coast to sea level rise, extreme storms, and anthropogenic influences is a major societal concern. Abstracts focusing on physical processes occurring in the nearshore region from the subaerial beach to the shelf break are invited. Interesting topics include: 1) surface and internal wave dynamics, 2) wind-, wave-, and tide-driven circulation, 3) extreme events in nearshore and river integrated systems, 4) mixing and turbulence, 5) cross-shelf exchange, 6) sediment transport and morphologic evolution, 7) process-based ecological or biological nearshore interactions. We welcome abstracts describing field observations (both remotely sensed and in-situ), numerical and laboratory modeling, theoretical analysis, and model-data assimilation. The nearshore processes session is an established and well-attended session in which student participation is strongly encouraged.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Littoral processes; Coastal processes; Estuarine processes; Nearshore processes

CP04 Coastal connections: Material transport between Land, Estuaries and the Shelf

Organizers:
Jessica Garwood, jgarwood@marine.rutgers.edu
Victoria Fulfer, vmf713@uri.edu
Elizabeth Brasseale, ebrasseale@ucsd.edu
Sutara Suanda, suandas@uncw.edu
Greg Gerbi, gregory.gerbi@maine.edu

This session will examine seaward and shoreward transport pathways between land, estuaries, and the shelf. The biological, chemical, and physical processes that occur as material is transported are fundamentally influenced by the materials themselves (plastics, nutrients, larvae, sediment, etc.). Thus, understanding both the pathways and the transformations along those pathways are essential for predicting the dispersal and fate of materials in coastal and estuarine environments.

Biological materials such as larvae may sink or swim in response to physical cues; land-based pollutants such as plastics may be positively, neutrally, or negatively buoyant; and spatial gradients in nutrient, oxygen, and carbonate influence their exchange. Within estuaries, particularly in wide systems with strong lateral circulation, the location where a tracer is introduced has strong effects on transport pathways and whether the material is retained in the estuary or exported to the coastal ocean. On the shelf, the likelihood of material being transported into estuaries can depend on season, wind, and position (upshelf or downshelf from the estuary mouth). In the nearshore, the distribution of materials from the beach through the surf zone to the inner shelf depends on the interaction of many physical processes, including surface and internal waves, rip currents, surfzone eddies, and wind-driven currents.

We invite submissions from all disciplines, with a focus on the sources, dynamics, and evolution of material along transport pathways. This includes sediment, larvae, plastics, and chemical tracers among many other possible constituents. Observational or modeling studies that investigate interactions between physical transport processes or advance understanding of underlying mechanisms driving transport also are welcome.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Coastal processes; Physical and biogeochemical interactions; Nearshore processes; Turbulence, diffusion, and mixing processes

CP05 Storm-induced Coastal Impacts: Prediction, Monitoring, Response, and Mitigation

Organizers:
Ap van Dongeren, ap.vandongeren@deltares.nl
Yuepeng Li, yuepli@fiu.edu
Arthur Taylor, arthur.taylor@noaa.gov
Maitane Olabarrieta, maitane.olabarrieta@essie.ufl.edu

Coastal communities are threatened by tropical and extratropical storms, which cause storm surge, high waves, rainfall and extreme river discharge and inflict flooding, erosion and destruction of property and infrastructure.

While significant advances have been made in the understanding and modelling of meteorological and hydrodynamical processes, accurate operational predictions of wave-driven flooding, morphological change, and structural damage are lagging. Moreover, the inclusion of uncertainties due to storm track and strength variability are not yet routine, because of theoretical and computational limitations.

Determining the optimal coastal inundation modeling and observation system is critical for many agencies and policy makers to predict, prepare, mitigate, and formulate responses to these disasters in order to save lives and reduce damages.

This session aims to strengthen the preparedness and response to coastal flooding disasters. To that end, we invite contributions on (1) new knowledge of hydrodynamic and morphodynamic processes, (2) advances in (operational) coastal forecasting and monitoring, (3) novel and computationally-efficient modelling and data-assimilation techniques, (4) meta- or aggregate modelling of coastal processes, (5) data-driven (Artificial Intelligence) approaches to predict coastal impacts, (6) improvements to pre-event disaster risk assessment studies, (7) improvements to post-event observations of damage, erosion and flood assessments, and (8) innovations to address the uncertainty of the guidance before the event and of the analysis after the event has happened.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling

Keywords: Hydrodynamic modeling; Tsunamis and storm surges; Nearshore processes; Sediment transport

CP06 Processes and Management of Altered Estuaries and Deltas in the Anthropocene Epoch

Organizers:
Guan-hong Lee, ghlee@inha.ac.kr
Timothy Dellapenna, dellapet@tamug.edu
Joseph Carlin, jcarlin@fulleton.edu
Daidu Fan, ddfan@tongji.edu.cn

Physically and geologically dispensable and ecologically valuable estuaries and deltas have been heavily altered over the last century by various human activities, including sedimentation from soil erosion; diking or damming for flood control and salt intrusion; drainage and filling of wetlands; and eutrophication due to excessive nutrients. These human alterations to our earth environment brought in the suggestion of defining the youngest geologic era of Anthropocene. Efforts have been made in recent decades to understand the nature of the processes operating in these altered estuaries and deltas and their responses to these modifications. This session will provide a venue to share our increased knowledge of the comprehensive nature of physical, geological, chemical, and biological processes of altered estuaries and deltas, as well as our experience on their restoration and adaptive management practices.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Marine sediments: processes and transport; Sediment transport; Science policy

CP07 Nearshore and Estuarine Cohesive Sediment Dynamics

Organizers:
Xiao Yu, xiao.yu@essie.ufl.edu
Andrew Manning, a.manning@hrwallingford.com

The transport of fine-grained cohesive sediment in nearshore and estuarine environments plays key roles in ecosystem dynamics, water quality, bed morphology and engineering applications. Numerical models have been widely used as tools to study the fundamental mechanisms of sediment transport and complex phenomena, in which sediment-turbulence interactions and inter-particle interactions are of critical importance.

In this session, we invite contributions from theoretical, laboratory, field observation and modelling studies on cohesive sediment transport in nearshore and estuarine environments. Specifically, we are interested in

1. Flocculation dynamics, including fluid temperature and microbial influence on flocculation, restructuring of flocs
2. erosion linked to soft sediment soil dynamics
3. effect of compressibility on erosion resistance.

Keywords: Marine sediments: processes and transport

CP08 Autonomous and Remotely-Operated System-Based Characterization of Nearshore and Riverine Environments

Organizers:
Tom Almeida, thomas.almeida@sri.com
Harrison Ko, harri.ko@sri.com
Kara Koetje, Kara.Koetje@nrlssc.navy.mil

Enhanced understanding of environmental conditions in nearshore and riverine areas of interest is of critical importance to water resource management, search and rescue, navigation, and naval operations. Observing and predicting hydrodynamic quantities such as currents, wave properties and bathymetry are important to analyzing these complex environments. Autonomous and remotely-operated systems, such as Unoccupied Aerial, Underwater and Surface Vehicles (UXVs), have recently emerged as powerful tools for remote sensing of the environment, including rivers and coastal regions. Autonomous and remotely-operated vehicles allow for rapid, detailed observations of coastal and riverine environments. These observations provide critical information for real-time operations and for initializing hydrodynamic forecasts. This session will highlight the application of unoccupied systems for the characterization of complex hydrodynamics in riverine and nearshore environments. Research that emphasizes transitional environments (e.g., estuaries) is encouraged, as is research that relies on alternative sensing platforms and modalities.

The proposed session will consider topics related to:

• Observational techniques employing unoccupied systems
• Methods and algorithms combining observations and simulations (e.g., inversion and assimilation)
• Close range remote sensing (e.g., photogrammetry, LiDAR, sonar and radar)
• Enhanced environmental situational awareness

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Ocean data assimilation and reanalysis; Remote sensing and electromagnetic processes; Instruments, sensors, techniques; Nearshore processes

CP09 Sediment Delivery, Transport, and Deposition in Marine and Lacustrine Environments

Organizers:
Cindy Palinkas, cpalinkas@umces.edu
Soupy Dalyander, sdalyander@thewaterinstitute.org
Courtney Harris, ckharris@vims.edu

Sediment transport processes are important in many areas of marine and lacustrine sciences such as biogeochemical cycles and evolution of water-column and benthic habitats. Additionally, the transport processes and environments present at the time of sediment deposition are preserved in the sedimentary record, providing insights into how ecosystems have responded to environmental changes over time. Recent advances in theoretical, observational, and numerical modeling techniques have led to a more integrative understanding of the processes and products of sediment delivery, transport, and deposition in aquatic environments including lakes, estuaries, continental shelves, and the deep ocean. Sediment texture in these environments often includes grain sizes from muds to sands and even gravels. This session showcases emerging research relevant to these environments including physical forcing, particle behavior, modes of transport, morphodynamic feedbacks, and event stratigraphy. The session especially welcomes studies that consider the impacts of sediment transport across disciplines including biogeochemical and contaminant feedbacks. Studies in this session may derive from field observations, laboratory experiments, and modeling across a range of spatial and temporal scales.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling; Marine sediments: processes and transport; Sediment transport; Benthic processes, benthos

CP10 Buoyancy-Driven Flows in estuaries, continental shelves and polar regions

Organizers:
Piero Mazzini, pmazzini@vims.edu
Sarah Giddings, sgiddings@ucsd.edu
Rebecca Jackson, rjackson@marine.rutgers.edu
Kelly Cole, kelly.cole@maine.edu

Freshwater input from rivers and ice melt has profound implications on physical and biogeochemical processes in estuaries, continental shelves and polar seas. The change in vertical and horizontal density gradients in response to freshwater flows influences both circulation and mixing in those environments. Moreover, some of these coastal environments experience transitions between salinity and temperature driven density either seasonally or spatially. In addition, buoyancy-driven flows interact non-linearly with wind-driven and tidal currents, surface and internal gravity waves, and bathymetry. The resulting complex hydrodynamics in those environments impact ecological and biogeochemical processes in addition to various physical processes such as sediment transport and ocean-cryosphere interactions. Understanding the complex dynamics of buoyancy-driven flows is necessary for the appropriate management of coastal and polar ecosystems, as well as for predicting how they will respond to future changes in precipitation and ice melt due to climate change. We welcome submissions that investigate the wide spectrum of scales of baroclinic flows in estuaries, continental shelves and polar regions using observational, numerical, remote sensing, laboratory and theoretical approaches.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; High Latitude Environments; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Estuarine processes; Continental shelf and slope processes; Arctic and Antarctic oceanography; Currents

CP11 Advances in non-linear wave modeling with complex structure interactions

Organizers:
Eric Tovar, ejtovar1@tamu.edu
Chris Kees, cekees@lsu.edu
Gaurav Savant, Gaurav.Savant@erdc.dren.mil
Haydel Collins, haydel.collins@gmail.com

Modeling hydrodynamic interactions with complex natural and man-made structure remains a challenge in coastal and estuarine science and engineering applications. In the nearshore environment, nonlinear and dispersive wave effects and wave breaking occur along with (and due to) rapidly varying bathymetry. Bathymetric variations across a range of scales occur due to both natural sediment transport and deposition processes and coastal storm protective structures. Sea-level rise and continued coastal development create demands for precise analysis of these and many other structures, such as offshore wind turbines and moored platforms. With the advancement of computational hardware and numerical methods, we can better predict and understand these complex interactions through computational modeling. The applications of interest in this session include water management, risk assessments for natural disasters, and coastal restoration. The goal for this session is to provide updates and accessible tools for researchers interested in non-linear wave modeling and fluid-structure interactions. Topics of discussion include: 1) mathematical models such Shallow Water Equations/Boussinesq-type models for shallow flows over complex topography and incompressible Navier-Stokes for multi-phase flows; 2) numerical methods based on continuous/discontinuous finite elements, finite volumes or finite differences; 3) advances in software evelopment for codes such as Proteus, openFOAM, ADH, etc.; and 4) novel applications of numerical models to study fluid and land interactions. Our hope is to bring together individuals from academia, government agencies and industry to encourage collaboration and provide community resources.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Ocean Modeling

Keywords: Computational models, algorithms; Modeling; Coastal processes; Nearshore processes

CP12 Remote Sensing of Nearshore Processes and Coastal Morphology

Organizers:
Shawn Harrison, shawn.harrison@nrlssc.navy.mil
Kate Brodie, katherine.l.brodie@erdc.dren.mil
Meg Palmsten, mpalmsten@usgs.gov
Alex Simpson, simpsale@oregonstate.edu
Christine Baker, cmbaker9@uw.edu

During the past decade, LiDAR, radar, multispectral and thermal sensors, as well as modern photogrammetry have become inexpensive and highly accessible. Various platforms including ground-based monitoring stations, piloted and autonomous aircraft, satellites, and social media harvesting provide datasets with increasingly high resolution, both in time (seconds to days) and space (sub-meter), allowing for detailed observations of changes in coastal landscapes and the related nearshore and beach processes driving those changes. These advances allow for a new understanding of the patterns, rates, and causes of coastal circulation and morphodynamics on scales of kilometers and less. High-resolution coastal remote sensing also allows for the documentation of ongoing and future effects of storms, sea-level rise, coastal restoration, and human impacts on coastal environments. Additionally, these technologies and methods facilitate interdisciplinary studies of the coastal zone. This session will highlight scientific results that have emerged from these technologies and methods and explore challenges and plans for future remote sensing efforts.

Keywords: Nearshore processes

Chemical Tracers, Organic Matter and Trace Elements

CT01 Temporal Variability of Bioactive Trace Elements in the Ocean: Towards Constraining Drivers, Mechanisms and Timescales

Organizers:
Peter Sedwick, psedwick@odu.edu
Erin Black, erinb@ldeo.columbia.edu
Alessandro Tagliabue, a.tagliabue@liverpool.ac.uk
Simon Ussher, simon.ussher@plymouth.ac.uk

In the past decade, our understanding of the distribution of bioactive trace elements has improved greatly, advancing the development of numerical models that provide mechanistic insight and predictive capability. However, in addition to establishing the spatial distribution of biologically active trace elements, it is equally important to understand their temporal variability. Such information provides critical constraints on the mechanisms that control the biogeochemical cycling of these elements, and allows the assessment and expansion of numerical modeling efforts. In this session, we invite interdisciplinary contributions from both observationalists and modelers that examine the time variation of bioactive trace elements in the ocean, from both chemical and biological perspectives, over timescales ranging from daily to millennial.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling

Keywords: Phytoplankton; Microbiology and microbial ecology; Trace elements; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling

CT02 Anthropogenic contaminants in nearshore and offshore environments: Occurrence, Distribution, Fate and Bioaccumulation

Organizers:
David Katz, katz.david@epa.gov
Autumn Oczkowski, oczkowski.autumn@epa.gov

Anthropogenic contaminants are continuously discharged, often via human waste, to coastal ecosystems around the globe, with a wide variation in treatment and removal prior to discharge. The oceanic fate of many contaminants, particularly in nearshore regions, are ultimately tied to global health and wellbeing. This session will discuss the transport and fate of anthropogenic compounds in the marine environment, linking chemical properties to the occurrence, distribution, and bioaccumulation of contaminants in both nearshore and offshore environments.

Cross listed Tracks: Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Marine organic chemistry; Stable isotopes; Analytical chemistry

CT03 Advances in understanding of the biogeochemical processes shaping the basin-scale distributions of trace elements and their isotopes

Organizers:
Tim Conway, tmconway@usf.edu
Lauren Kipp, kipp@rowan.edu
Jessica Fitzsimmons, jessfitz@tamu.edu
Greg Cutter, gcutter@odu.edu

A range of important trace elements act as micronutrients, toxins, or tracers throughout the global oceans. The distributions of these trace elements are shaped by a range of biotic and abiotic processes including external sources and sinks, microbial uptake and regeneration, exchange with particles, and physical circulation of the oceans. In recent years, field programs such as GEOTRACES, CLIVAR, and SOLAS have hugely expanded the available datasets of trace elements and their isotopes (TEIs) throughout the oceans. These and other datasets are being used to determine the processes, sources, and sinks that control observed TEI distributions, and the transformations and rates of input, removal, and exchange associated with each process. Here, we invite submissions of abstracts using ocean transect, field, laboratory, or modelling datasets that focus on the distribution, isotopic composition, speciation, and cycling of TEIs at the basin-scale, as well as abstracts which use geochemical tracers to interrogate the internal cycling and source/sink processes which shape these basin-scale distributions or transform TEIs within the ocean. In addition to studies that yield insights into the current distributions and cycling of TEIs, we also invite submissions that investigate how the oceanic cycling of TEIs may change in response to the changing oceans and warming climate.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; High Latitude Environments; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling

Keywords: Stable isotopes; Trace elements; Chemical tracers

CT04 Chemical methods to understand marine plastic pollution quantities, sources, transport, fate, impacts, and solutions

Organizers:
Jennifer Lynch, jennifer.lynch@nist.gov
Katherine Shaw, katherine.shaw@nist.gov
Sarah-Jeanne Royer, sroyer@hpu.edu
Sanghee Hong, shhong@kiost.ac.kr
Samreen Siddiqui, samreen_siddiqui@outlook.com

Plastic marine debris is a global problem and increasing every year. Synthetic polymers have diverse molecular structures, additives, environmental transport and fates, contaminant affinities, and degradation rates, thus having different impacts on exposed organisms. Chemical techniques are needed to answer fundamental questions related to plastic pollution and this session aims to highlight studies that encompass diverse topics. Topics may include: 1) production of nano- and microplastic standards, 2) development of optimal or harmonized methods to detect, identify, and quantify polymers (nano to mega sized) in complex environmental samples, 3) measurements of weathering rates and processes, 4) investigations into the fate of additive chemicals and other contaminants sorbed onto plastic debris, and 5) assessments of toxicological effects and ecological risk of polymers and associated chemicals. The marine debris problem affects every facet of ocean science, and chemical methods are direly needed to address the quantities, types, source, movement, fate, and impacts of the plastic found in every zone of the ocean.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; Education & Outreach; Fish and Fisheries; High Latitude Environments; Islands and Reefs; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: General or miscellaneous; Regional planning; Pacific Ocean

Co-sponsors: PICES

CT05 The Marine Nitrogen Cycle

Organizers:
Patrick Rafter, prafter@uci.edu
Carolyn Buchwald, cbuchwald@dal.ca
Masha Prokopenko, masha.prokopenko@gmail.com
Bonnie Chang, bxc@uw.edu

Abstract: Nitrogen (N) is a vital and often limiting nutrient to marine productivity, yet many fundamental questions about the oceanic N budget remain unresolved. Recent discoveries of novel organisms and N metabolisms have highlighted the coupling of various N transformations within the cycle, as well as between the N and other biogeochemical cycles, the factors that regulate them, and the symbioses of the microbes that perform them as important on both short and geologic timescales. Uncertainties in the marine N cycle and global N budget are often due to limitations of the methods we use to study them. The recent emergence of new techniques and multifaceted approaches have yielded unprecedented insight into every aspect of marine N cycling. The list of processes we want to see discussed in this forum are: N2 fixation, nitrification, denitrification, anammox, the uptake of fixed N, the remineralization of fixed N, the importance of marine N on primary production, past and future changes in N cycling, and more. With respect to analyses, we want to see the full variety of approaches, including: rate experiments, natural isotope abundance, stable isotope probing, numerical modeling, other direct observations of marine N cycling, proxy observations of marine N cycling, and even observations from robots (i.e., Argo floats).

Cross listed Tracks: Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Nutrients and nutrient cycling

CT06 Marine Carbonate System Measurements and Intercomparability

Organizers:
Brendan Carter, Brendan.carter@noaa.gov
Leticia Barbero, leticia.barbero@noaa.gov
Marta Álvarez, marta.alvarez@ieo.es
Ryan Woosley, rwoosley@mit.edu
Yui Takeshita, yui@mbari.org

Consistent and accurate seawater CO2 measurements are foundational to assess marine CO2 cycling and its impacts over time: e.g. dissolved inorganic carbon records for anthropogenic carbon storage and changes in the biological pump, partial pressure of CO2 records for air-sea CO2 flux estimates, pH records for ocean acidification (OA) monitoring, and seawater alkalinity records for assessing the impacts of OA on carbonate mineral cycling. However, recent literature has highlighted several ongoing challenges regarding seawater CO2 uncertainty and internal consistency, where systematic discrepancies are observed between directly measured and calculated parameters. These gaps in our knowledge could be related to (but not limited to) carbonate constant uncertainties, frequently-unknown concentrations of organic bases in seawater, and unrecognized measurement uncertainties. CO2 measurement intercomparability is also challenged by the large and growing variety of instruments and approaches used for measurements and the lack of robust assessments or certified reference materials for some methods. As measurement strategies diversify and evolve, it is more critical than ever that scientists develop a strategy for identifying and addressing carbonate system intercomparability uncertainties. This will enable existing and future data to be reconciled into internally-consistent data products with associated uncertainties.

In this session we invite presentations of research that aims to quantify or reduce uncertainties in measured or calculated carbonate system parameters and their associated impacts on biogeochemical process assessments. We encourage submissions across a wide range of topics, such as efforts that focus on sources of uncertainty of a particular carbonate parameter, efforts to improve carbonate system measurement practices across the community, and broad analysis of how such uncertainties translate to uncertainties in data products or oceanographic processes.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Physical and chemical properties of seawater; Analytical chemistry; Marine inorganic chemistry

CT07 Multidisciplinary insights into pathways of carbon export

Organizers:
David Siegel, david.siegel@ucsb.edu
Ivona Cetinic, ivona.cetinic@nasa.gov
Amy Maas, amy.maas@bios.edu
David Nicholson, dnicholson@whoi.edu
Melissa Omand, momand@uri.edu

Light-driven photosynthetic production and subsequent downward transport of carbon is responsible for transferring 5-12 Pg carbon to the twilight zone, annually. This biological carbon pump regulates atmospheric carbon dioxide and supports mesopelagic ecosystems. Multifaceted processes studies such as EXPORTS, COMICS, GOCART, CUSTARD, and OTZ are leveraging advances in -omics, in situ imaging, remote sensing, geochemistry, underwater robotics and computational approaches to identify mechanistic relationships and predictive insights into the functioning of the biological carbon pump. Such process studies address the interplay of primary carbon export pathways, namely, gravitational sinking, active migration and vertical transport by ocean physics. This session welcomes research topics employing ecological, biogeochemical and physical observations aimed at improving quantification and understanding of biologically-mediated carbon fluxes in the ocean. Abstracts are encouraged both from studies focused on individual process studies as well as those addressing regional and global patterns of carbon export.

Cross listed Tracks: Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling; Carbon cycling; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modelingInstruments, sensors, and techniques

For More Information: https://oceanexports.org/

CT09 Biogeochemistry of marine particles: from coastal to deep ocean

Organizers:
Rut Pedrosa Pamies, rpedrosa@mbl.edu
Zhanfei Liu, zhanfei.liu@utexas.edu
Anja Engel, aengel@geomar.de
Alexander Bochdansky, abochdan@odu.edu

The dynamics of suspended and sinking particulate organic matter (POM) in the ocean play a major role in global elemental cycles and the ocean uptake of carbon dioxide. POM is a key component of the biological pump by exporting carbon from surface to deep ocean and seafloor. POM is also a key link from biota to dissolved organic matter.

Thus, a central focus of marine biogeochemistry studies is to improve our understanding of POM distribution, sources, composition, cycling and fate in marine ecosystems, from coastal to the deep ocean. Combination of different sampling methods and recent improvements in chemical and molecular techniques (e.g., stable and radioactive isotopic composition, proteomics, lipidomics, genomics, microscopy, particle imaging, etc.) are providing novel insights into organic matter cycling within marine ecosystems. Additionally, modeling studies improve our understanding of the global POM inventories, distribution, and controlling factors.

This multidisciplinary session aims to bring together field scientists, modelers and experimentalists under research themes related to organic geochemistry, biogeochemistry, ecology, physical and chemical oceanography to present the current status of our understanding of processes controlling the magnitude, composition, sources, aggregation and degradation processes, fate of POM in marine ecosystems, the linkage between the organic matter pools, and its coupling with associated biogeochemical cycles. The presentations of this session will show novel findings and syntheses, which, in turn, will highlight key knowledge gaps in the organic matter cycling in marine environments.

Cross listed Tracks: Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling

Keywords: Carbon cycling; Sedimentation; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling; Marine organic chemistry

CT10 Sources, sinks, and cycling of trace elements in coastal and near-shore systems

Organizers:
David Janssen, janssen.davej@gmail.com
Veronique Oldham, voldham@uri.edu
Emily Estes, estes@iodp.tamu.edu

The terrestrial-ocean continuum regulates the delivery of trace elements to the global ocean; however, important gaps remain in understanding the complex cycling of trace elements in coastal systems. Further, coastal systems face significant pressure from anthropogenic climate change, nutrient loading, and inputs of environmental toxins. This session aims to connect GEOTRACES-style studies on distributions of trace elements with studies examining processes and cycling of trace elements in nearshore environments to better bridge the terrestrial-ocean continuum. We invite contributions examining the cycling of trace elements and their isotopes in rivers, wetlands and estuaries; inlets, marginal seas and inland seas; and the near-shore coastal ocean. Field, laboratory, and modelling studies of trace element distributions, speciation, biological transformations, sources and sinks, and pollution & remediation are welcome. We particularly encourage studies (1) on the transport of terrestrially-sourced metals and dissolved organic matter to near-shore environments; (2) on metal fluxes to and from shelf sediments; (3) linking processes regulating near-shore trace element availability and their impact on the biosphere; and (4) investigating natural and anthropogenic perturbations on trace element cycling in these systems.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Trace elements; Chemical speciation and complexation; Nutrients and nutrient cycling

CT11 Mercury transformations in marine ecosystems

Organizers:
Eric Capo, eric.capo@hotmail.fr
Amina Schartup, aschartup@ucsd.edu
Heyu Lin, heyu.lin@student.unimelb.edu.au
Lars-Eric Heimbürger, lars-eric.heimburger@mio.osupytheas.fr

Mercury (Hg) is a naturally occurring element that has been mined and released by humans for millennia. Inorganic Hg is released by natural processes such as volcanic activity, and also by human activities which have largely outweighed natural ones. We have known for half a century that methylmercury is naturally formed in marine sediment and water column from inorganic Hg and is a potent neurotoxicant. The majority of global methylmercury exposure for human populations is from marine ecosystems due to its bioaccumulation in predatory fish at levels that are a million times, or more, higher than seawater. Yet our understanding of abiotic and biotic Hg transformations in marine systems is still limited. A greater understanding of the microbial reactions and geochemical conditions conducive to the formation and degradation of methylmercury is needed to mitigate its impacts on the health of fish-consuming wildlife and human populations. This session invites presentations on Hg transformations in marine ecosystems.

Cross listed Tracks: Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Microbiology and microbial ecology; Trace elements

For More Information: https://ercapo.wixsite.com/meta-hg

Deep Sea Processes and Exploration

DS01 Deep-sea ecosystem response to physical disturbances

Organizers:
Katharine Bigham, katie.bigham@vuw.ac.nz
Ashley Rowden, Ashley.Rowden@vuw.ac.nz
Tacey Hicks, hicks.tacey@tamu.edu

Deep-sea environments (water depths >200 m) are under increasing pressure stemming from interest in the “Blue Economy” and associated technological developments. Understanding how deep-sea community structure and function responds to the direct and indirect effects of physical disturbance is critical to managing potential impacts to ensure ecosystems remain sustainable. Insights can be gained about these responses by studying how communities are affected by natural physical events, as well as by observations of actual or simulated human-induced disturbances. In this session we invite submissions investigating all aspects of deep-sea ecosystem resilience, resistance, and recovery, or lack thereof, to anthropogenic and natural disturbances. These may include, but are not limited to, fishing/bottom trawling, mass wasting and turbidity flows, benthic storms, bioturbation, aggregate dredging, and ice scours. We also welcome submissions that describe the results of studies that utilize novel sampling approaches and technologies, manipulative experiments, laboratory studies, and/or modelling techniques. Studies of a multidisciplinary nature, encompassing a range of spatial and temporal scales are especially encouraged.

Cross listed Tracks: Fish and Fisheries; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Benthic processes, benthos; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling

DS02 Wonder and Discovery in the Great Barrier Reef, Coral Sea, and Beyond: New Research and Exploration from Australia

Organizers:
Allison Miller, amiller@schmidtocean.org
Leonard Pace, lpace@schmidtocean.org
Robin Beaman, robin.beaman@jcu.edu.au

Schmidt Ocean Institute’s (SOI) research vessel Falkor recently spent 16 months, from January 2020 to April 2021, operating and exploring the waters surrounding Australia, such as the Coral Sea, Great Barrier Reef, and Ashmore Reef. Until Falkor’s arrival, Australia did not have a dedicated science ROV for video and sampling of waters below 200 meters. The waters around Australia and within its many Marine Parks, are rich with biodiversity and iconic features. SOI’s work allowed for some of the first visualizations of these deep-sea environments resulting in astounding ROV footage of glass sponge gardens, massive gorgonia forests, a natural whale fall, and coral graveyards. New discoveries such as a 500 meter tall coral reef, yielded a wealth of new knowledge that has important implications for the protection of these ecosystems and similar habitats worldwide.

During the course of its operations, SOI made many wondrous discoveries such as the world’s longest known sea creature, a new species of black coral, and rare sightings of a scorpionfish, short-tail catshark, ram’s horn squid, and pygmy seahorse. The many species reported in Australian waters for the first time will impact ocean policy for years to come. Additionally ROV exploration extended the known range of many species, including the Faceless Cusk Eel, Whipnos anglerfish, Leptoseris coral fields, Pumpkin star, and Deepwater spike fish.

This session will focus on the wondrous new discoveries and impacts made, including identifying new species, observing the unexpected presence of some species, mapping new seafloor features, technological innovations, and other exciting scientific results in the deep waters of Australia. Presentations that highlight groundbreaking scientific and technological developments being used to study and monitor the changes taking place in and around the country’s waters, as well as policy implications, will also be included.

Cross listed Tracks: Islands and Reefs; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Coral reef systems; Food webs, structure, and dynamics; Science policy; Australia/New Zealand

DS03 Discovering the Unknown Ocean: NOAA Ocean Exploration 2001 – 2021

Organizers:
Stephen Hammond, stephen.r.hammond@noaa.gov
Chris Beaverson, chris.beaverson@noaa.gov
Kelley Suhre, kelley.suhre@noaa.gov
Frank Cantelas, frank.cantelas@noaa.gov

Presentations will provide outstanding examples of multidisciplinary marine science discoveries, new or emerging areas of scientific inquiry, and novel exploration methodologies and approaches inspired by a Strategy for Ocean Exploration established by a Presidential Panel in 2000. It is anticipated that papers submitted for the session will include results and consequences from expeditions and projects sponsored during the past two decades by NOAA Ocean Exploration and including ocean exploration discoveries made by other organizations partnering and collaborating with NOAA. Themes of the presentations will include ocean exploration, exploration in support of management, exploration for submerged marine heritage and paleo-landscape sites, and ocean exploration technology innovation and development.

The session would consist of two parts. The first part, Session 1, would focus on field cruises, data collection (including bathymetry), and tools and methodology for exploration. The second part, Session 2, would focus on results including biological, physical, chemical, and geological oceanographic discoveries, regional habitat or cultural heritage inventories, and data supporting management needs (including the creation or expansion of marine protected areas).

Cross listed Tracks: Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Descriptive and regional oceanography

For More Information: https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov

DS04 Sedimentation and redistribution of natural sediments and the introduction of anthropogene contaminants into the deep sea.

Organizers:
Arne Diercks, arne.diercks@usm.edu
Isabel Romero, isabelromero@usf.edu
Rebekka Larson, larsonra@eckerd.edu
Patrick Schwing, schwinpt@eckerd.edu

The deep sea floor is the ultimate depository for marine sediments. The vertical flux, remineralization and lateral redistribution of these materials once on the seafloor are important pieces of information needed to determine the ultimate fate of this material and its contribution to the environment and global ocean health. These materials come from a variety of allochthonous and autochthonous sources, including terrestrial river run off, biological production, aerosol input and anthropogenic contaminants, ranging from drilling mud to PAH's and microplastics. We are only beginning to understand the processes and time scales that contribute to this final deposition and potential burial of these materials in the abyssal deep sea. In-situ measurements and high resolution seafloor morphological characterization are lacking for most of the deep sea, preventing a comprehensive understanding of transport or burial processes. Unique habitats also exist at these depths, such as the distal ends of submarine canyons where nutrients are funneled from the shelf and support deep sea communities. Little is known about these communities and the potential impact they might have in pharmacological or medical research.

We propose a session that will present results from deep sea research that advances our understanding of these environments, the material being deposited and the fate of the material once deposited on the seafloor.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Deep Sea Processes and Exploration

Keywords: Oceans; Marine pollution; Deep recirculations; Sedimentation

DS05 Time Travel, Legacy and Frontiers: Scientific Ocean Drilling Connects the Past, Present and Future workings of our planet

Organizers:
Sharon Cooper, scooper@ldeo.columbia.edu
Carol Cotterill, carol.cotterill.usssp@gmail.com
Rosalind Coggon, R.M.Coggon@soton.ac.uk
Marta Torres, Marta.Torres@oregonstate.edu
Suzanne O'Connell, soconnell@wesleyan.edu
Lauren Haygood, Lauren.haygood@okstate.edu

For more than 50 years, Scientific Ocean Drilling has played a significant role in the gathering of cores and data from the ocean floor, leading to greatly increased understanding of Earth’s past. Scientific ocean drilling addresses fundamental questions about the complex and interconnected processes that drive tectonics, climate and life on Earth and shape our planet’s future. It uses sophisticated technologies to collect sediment, rock, microbial, and fluid samples from beneath the seafloor and deploys state-of-the-art measurement devices and long-term observatories. These activities provide critical information about geologic processes, natural hazards and establish geologic context for interpreting human impact on climate and the environment.

The current phase of the International Ocean Discovery Program is funded through NSF and its international partner organizations through 2023. A new phase of scientific ocean drilling is now required to address urgent societal challenges in climate change, geohazards, ocean health, and planetary habitability. This vision is laid out in a multi-decadal Science Framework, which outlines seven strategic objectives, five flagship initiatives and four enabling elements to drive scientific ocean drilling into the future. A large amount of planning across disciplines and countries has been going into what a post-2023 scientific ocean drilling future might look like, including professional development, community-wide workshops, and intensive committee work on developing innovative strategies for successful implementation.

This session invites abstracts showcasing the interdisciplinary and innovative science and outreach initiatives facilitated by scientific ocean drilling. We also welcome abstracts sharing the interconnected and outside-the-box planning required to move this science forward in ways that address both scientific and engineering objectives, and broaden participation amongst a new generation of science leaders.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; Education & Outreach; Ocean Technologies and Observatories

Keywords: Teacher training; Abrupt/rapid climate change; Marine sediments: processes and transport; Ocean drilling

For More Information: https://www.joidesresolution.org/

DS06 Deep-sea Mining: Environmental risks and ecological baselines

Organizers:
Beth Orcutt, borcutt@bigelow.org
Jeffrey Drazen, jdrazen@hawaii.edu
Erica Goetze, egoetze@hawaii.edu
Diva Amon, divaamon@gmail.com

Interest in deep-sea mining for abyssal polymetallic nodules, seamount cobalt crusts, and sulfide deposits around hydrothermal vents has risen dramatically in the last decade. Over 1.5 million km2 of the seabed in international waters are currently under exploration licenses by mining companies and sponsoring countries. A number of individual countries have also provided licenses for exploration within their EEZs. Along with commercial interest, the pace of research into deep-sea seafloor and midwater ecosystems and communities has grown. However, many animal and microbial communities in the deep ocean in areas of mining interest remain poorly described. The potential environmental risks to both water column and seafloor ecosystems are actively being explored. In this session we invite presentations on deep-sea communities and processes, particularly presentations that inform our understanding of the structure and function of communities in potential mining regions, and the environmental risks they will likely encounter.

Cross listed Tracks: Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade

Keywords: Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling; Food webs, structure, and dynamics; Population dynamics and ecology

DS07 Advancing Ocean Exploration Technology

Organizers:
Adam Soule, adamsoule@uri.edu
Aurora Elmore, aurora.elmore@noaa.gov
Jason Chaytor, jchaytor@usgs.gov
Andy Bowen, abowen@whoi.edu

A significant fraction of the ocean remains unexplored. Mapping, exploring, and characterizing these portions of the ocean is a global priority, both to improve our scientific understanding of ocean processes and to evaluate national and international resources and hazards and for the health, wealth, and safety of society. Many nations have set out ambitious goals to explore the oceans including the National Ocean Mapping, Exploration, and Characterization (NOMEC) strategy in the US. In order to achieve the NOMEC objectives and those of other nations, technological advancements that accelerate the pace of ocean exploration must be envisioned, developed, tested, and operationalized.

We invite the research community to share their novel technologies and approaches that will advance ocean exploration. These may include concepts for next-generation technology, prototype or developmental systems, utilization of machine learning and artificial intelligence in ocean exploration, new approaches using existing technology, and new sensors that improve vehicle operations or provide new insight into ocean systems. We welcome contributions presenting vehicles or vessels that use autonomy to explore the oceans, systems that offer flexibility in platforms for deployment and recovery, vehicles or technology that provide access to the most inhospitable parts of the oceans, swarms or collaborative collections of instruments or vehicles, and systems that can be controlled remotely (i.e., de-crewed).

We hope that this session enables the sharing of technological and operational innovations that may have broad disciplinary applications so that the community may collectively help to advance the pace and scope of ocean exploration.

Cross listed Tracks: Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Technologies and Observatories

Keywords: Submergence instruments: ROV, AUV, submersibles; Instruments, sensors, techniques; Instruments, sensors, and techniques

DS08 The impact of submarine hydrothermal and volcanic activity on ocean chemistry and biology

Organizers:
Joseph Resing, resing@uw.edu
Colleen Hoffman, clhoffma@uw.edu
Veronique Oldham, voldham@uri.edu

Most sites of submarine hydrothermal activity remain unexplored and uncharacterized. This has limited our understanding of how these systems interact with and impact the broader ocean. However, over the last 40 years of active research and exploration, it has become clear that interactions between the solid Earth and the Ocean at submarine volcanoes have significant impacts on ocean chemistry, physics, and biology. These impacts are driven by feedbacks between the geology, chemistry, physics, and biology of these systems. These coupled processes extend from beneath the seafloor, to the seafloor itself, to plumes rising above the seafloor, and to transport of hydrothermal materials into the distal ocean. This session encourages studies on the impacts of hydrothermal activity on oceanic biogeochemistry, highlighting transport mechanisms of hydrothermal effluent into the distal ocean. We invite studies examining cycling and transport near hydrothermal vent systems, as well as studies examining the role of hydrothermal venting on the surface ocean where hydrothermally sourced trace-nutrients may relieve trace-nutrient limitation. Studies are encouraged addressing the transformation of hydrothermally sourced elements by biological, chemical, and physical processes, especially those processes that promote the transport of these elements from hydrothermal systems to the global ocean. This session also welcomes studies of hydrothermal fluid chemistry, micro- and macro-biology, and on subseafloor processes.

Cross listed Tracks: Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Hydrothermal systems; Trace elements; Chemical speciation and complexation

DS09 Catalyzing Atlantic discovery: New insights into deepwater biological and geological exploration of the Atlantic basin

Organizers:
Kasey Cantwell, kasey.cantwell@noaa.gov
Murray Roberts, Murray.Roberts@ed.ac.uk
Caitlin Adams, caitlin.adams@noaa.gov
Ellen Kenchington, Ellen.Kenchington@dfo-mpo.gc.ca

Though it borders densely populated areas of four continents, much of the deep (>200 m) Atlantic Ocean remains unexplored. This region encompasses diverse canyons and seamounts, deep-sea coral and sponge habitats, methane seeps, a dynamic oceanic ridge system, and more. Many basic questions remain for these ecosystems regarding population dynamics, biogeography, and the impacts of geological and oceanographic processes. This knowledge gap has been a significant barrier to Atlantic deep-sea ecosystem management plan development. However, trans-Atlantic initiatives like the Atlantic Seafloor Partnership for Integrated Research and Exploration (ASPIRE), iAtlantic, ATLAS, SponGES, and others have spurred new partnerships, investments, and discoveries throughout the Atlantic basin and highlighted the connections between these ecosystems. By leveraging domestic (e.g. Okeanos Explorer expeditions, Southeast Deep Coral Initiative, and DEEP SEARCH) and international (e.g. Galway and Belem Statements, Seabed 2030, All-Atlantic Ocean Research Alliance, and E.U. Horizon 2020 programme) initiatives to map and explore the Atlantic, these collaborative efforts have expanded our understanding of the basin. This session provides a forum for current research, new discoveries, and emerging technologies that provide insights into the deepwater habitats, geological history and phenomena, and connectivity of the Atlantic Basin. Anticipated talks include results from recent expeditions, as well as other ongoing deep-sea research projects from the entire Atlantic basin, north to south and east to west. We also welcome papers at the science/policy interface that explore the relevance of Atlantic discovery science to long-term deep-sea ecosystem management. By sharing the results from this session and bringing together the Atlantic basin science community, we anticipate new collaborations to develop and to gain a better understanding of the deep sea habitats of the basin as a whole.

Cross listed Tracks: Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy

Keywords: Seafloor morphology, geology, and geophysics; Benthic processes, benthos; Population dynamics and ecologyAtlantic Ocean

Education & Outreach

Submssion to Education and Outreach sessions do not count against the one abstract per submitter rule.

ED01 Student Symposium

Organizers:
Benjamin Cuker, benjamin.cuker@hamptonu.edu
Deidre Gibson, deidre.gibson@hamptonu.edu

This session is sponsored by the ASLO Multicultural Program. It provides undergraduate and beginning graduate students an opportunity to present their work in an oral session with a friendly and supportive audience. Any student attending the conference who has not before presented in the student symposium or in a regular oral session may submit their abstract for this session. Thus the session is open to all students that meet this criterion, regardless of their affiliation with the Multicultural Program. We look forward to a diverse mix of students from all backgrounds and interests.

Cross listed Tracks: Education & Outreach

Keywords: General or miscellaneous; Paleolimnology

ED02 Education, Outreach, and Citizen Science for Coastal Processes

Organizers:
Jack Puleo, jpuleo@udel.edu
Ryan Mulligan, ryan.mulligan@queensu.ca
Alec Torres-Freyermuth, ATorresF@iingen.unam.mx

We request permission for a session on education, community outreach, and citizen science related specifically to coastal processes. Local and national funding agencies now routinely require broader impacts and community interaction as part of funded research efforts. These broader impacts, while required, often receive little recognition nor dissemination with researchers favoring the more technical coastal processes aspects instead. When these impacts are disseminated, they tend to occur as outlier presentations at technical conferences or may reside as an individual paper in an obscure education-based journal. Presentation at a conference focused on ocean sciences and with a broad range of participants will provide the needed exposure for these efforts.

We seek abstracts related to 1) education efforts from elementary through undergraduate including discussion of pedagogy, approach, and/or curriculum/implementation development, 2)Distance learning for coastal processes, 3) studies associated with analysis of curriculum delivery associated with coastal processes, 4) Description of community-based projects, 5) Description of community outreach and/or stakeholder interactions and benefits, 6) Description and/or results from citizen science projects, and/or 7) other education, community, or citizen science efforts.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Education & Outreach

Keywords: Curriculum and laboratory design; Elementary and secondary education; Post-secondary education; Evaluation and assessment

ED03 Undergraduate student-faculty collaboration in ocean science research: How to foster meaningful frameworks for research and the results of those efforts.

Organizers:
Martin Hoecker-Martinez, martin_hoecker-marti@redlands.edu
Amanda Kaltenberg, kaltenberga@savannahstate.edu
Alexander Parker, aparker@csum.edu
McKenzie Powers, mckpwrs@uga.edu

Results and processes from ocean science research done with undergraduate collaborators. The prior training of undergraduates and the time they have to dedicate to a project are both much shorter than a graduate student. The project scope and the types of mentorship relationships reflect those differences, while presenting unique research opportunities. Research conducted through undergraduate programs finds a variety of ways to align the requirements of the research to the logistical constraints and needs of undergraduates' experiences. The expectations and teaching demands on undergraduate mentors often determine the scope and direction of these projects. Supervisors are encouraged to present the frameworks used to integrate research into the undergraduate academic calendar, including course-embedded undergraduate research experiences as well as summer research programs. Presentations will describe the approaches taken to various aspects of collaboration with undergraduates in addition to results of the work. Students are encouraged to present their results from these collaborations.

Cross listed Tracks: Education & Outreach

Keywords: Post-secondary education; Geoscience education research

ED04 Adventures, Challenges, and Benefits of Conducting International Collaborative Research

Organizers:
Brittany Schieler, communications@aslo.org
Adina Paytan, apaytan@ucsc.edu
Michael Pace, pacem@virginia.edu
Linda Duguay, duguay@usc.edu

Aquatic sciences are increasingly global in nature, transcending political boundaries and requiring collaborations with foreign scientists along with working in other countries. Planning and executing collaborative research projects overseas, however, is not trivial. Challenges including identifying and communicating with scientists in a different country, obtaining funding for international work, overcoming technical obstacles such as shipping, permits, and dealing with language and cultural barriers, are just a few examples. In this session we invite participants at all stages of their career to share their experiences and lessons learned from both productive and not so successful adventures in conducting international collaborative research in aquatic sciences. We seek presentations on international collaboration related to funding, identifying collaborators, executing projects, overcoming obstacles, developing teams, leveraging mutual advantages and infrastructure, handling difficulties, and successful outcomes. We hope that this exchange will help others avoid pitfalls and take advantage of opportunities and increase the likelihood for effective and fun international collaborations in the aquatic sciences.

Keywords: Post-secondary education; Instructional toolsWorkforce; Techniques applicable in three or more fields

For More Information: https://www.aslo.org/lorex/

ED06 Enabling Remote Ocean Science and Educational Opportunities, Lessons Learned During a Global Pandemic and Benefits for the Future

Organizers:
Meme Lobecker, elizabeth.lobecker@noaa.gov
Carolyn Scheurle, carolyn.scheurle@imev-mer.fr
Trish Albano, trish.albano@noaa.gov
Allison Fundis, allison@oceanexplorationtrust.org

Recent technological developments have allowed ocean scientists to push frontiers. In addition to broadening scientific capacity, these advances are reflected in ocean education and outreach. The pandemic shifted these ocean science operations, and related outreach and education. Innovative adaptations were made to continue advancing ocean science and education while adhering to public health guidance. This session will highlight how programs executed remote science, education, and outreach amidst pandemic challenges using remote technologies. Many conducted operations using various levels of telepresence for remote participation and access to critical technology. This included a variety of platforms such as research and exploration vessels, cloud technology, uncrewed systems (UxS) such as autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), autonomous surface vessels (ASVs), and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), as well as traditional laboratories, and ocean science programs. This session will encourage discussion of how remote opportunities can enable more equitable access to participation in ocean science and education to foster an ocean-literate generation through dynamic spaces created from formal and informal learning environments (e.g. providing experiential learning opportunities to communities without access to local marine environments or to individuals who are unable to participate in field work). Presentations may focus on observations (e.g., change in audiences), give feedback on virtual versions and possible effects (e.g., interactions, multidisciplinary approaches), and/or highlight creative or unexpected outcomes. Finally, the session will explore plans for incorporating remote participation and learning into future endeavors. In addition to sharing novel adaptations, participants will have the opportunity to identify connections and relationships that were forged during this experience and discuss methods for future collaborations within the Ocean Decade.

Cross listed Tracks: Education & Outreach; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Technologies and Observatories

Keywords: Curriculum and laboratory design; High-performance computing; System design; System operation and management

For More Information: https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/

ED07 Democratizing Data: Environmental Data Access and its Future

Organizers:
Michael Kruk, michael.kruk@noaa.gov
Tiffany Vance, tiffany.vance@noaa.gov
Kevin Butler, kbutler@esri.com

One of the tenets of big data is the idea of the (2,4, 7) V’s - Volume, Velocity, Variety, Variability, Veracity, Visualization, and Value. With the increase in the volume and velocity of data, access becomes ever more challenging. Users have access to more types of data and they can become overwhelmed by the possibilities. In the past, data access has been confusing but now there is more user engagement in building friendlier and more usable interfaces. Discovery is now more flexible and all encompassing - for example using schema.org to enable data discovery and via Google search. This increased use of data is not limited to scientists and other professionals. Citizens use data more than they realize (maps, elevation charts, tides, etc.) so they are constantly accessing data from a variety of sources.

There remains a broader community goal to have improved data access with the aim of democratizing data by removing gatekeepers so that data are unrestricted and available in a meaningful way to all. Improved access to data also supports data equity - “The term “data equity” captures a complex and multi-faceted set of ideas. It refers to the consideration, through an equity lens, of the ways in which data is collected, analyzed, interpreted, and distributed.” By making data more easily accessed and used we also make the ability to use data more equitable.

We want to gather a set of papers that bring together all aspects of the data access process with a focus on improving data access for a wide range of users. We propose the following structure:

• data discoverability
• data access
• data and service equity
• data usability
• user interface/engagement/input
• visualization tools
• reproducibility and tracing
• after access

Keywords: General or miscellaneous

ED08 Addressing Barriers to Minoritized Scholars Entering Internship, Fellowship, and Graduate Programs in the Ocean Sciences

Organizers:
Valerie Sloan, vsloan@ucar.edu
Catalina Martinez, catalinamartinez@my.uri.edu

Scholars in minoritized groups including Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and first generation college students who seek careers in the ocean sciences face many barriers in pursuing their desired educational and career pathways. On the one hand, historic and persistent systemic bias and racism have maintained stark inequities in economic, social, cultural, and political capital that impact access. This capital is the accumulation of resources, connections, and knowledge of opportunities, norms, behaviors that the dominant culture demands. For example, students from privileged backgrounds have greater access to professional guidance on preparing application materials. On the other hand, internship, scholarship, and graduate programs employ problematic practices such as selection processes that rely on letters of recommendation, which are known to be rife with bias with respect to gender and race (Dutt, 2016, Akos and Kretchmar, 2018). These programs are often devoid of culturally informed inclusivity which can have the effect of negatively impacting a minoritized scholar's confidence and sense of being seen for their talents. This “Imposter Environment” is another unfortunate barrier that discourages entry into and pursuit of science by excellent minoritized students. The loss of such talented students should be of concern to the ocean sciences. The most pressing issues facing 21st century ocean science will require a diversity of ideas and concerns that may not be represented within the current community of ocean scientists. Furthermore, including all interested members of society in pursuing science is the right thing to do. In this session, presenters will identify barriers to entry to underrepresented scholars and share approaches for creating more equitable processes and developing inclusive cultures where all can thrive.

Cross listed Tracks: Education & Outreach

Keywords: Post-secondary education; Diversity

ED09 K-12 Youth Sessions: K-12 Youth Ocean Science Research Presentations

Organizers:
Elizabeth Eubanks, hoocaca@yahoo.com
Janet Warburton, warburton@arcus.org
Judy Lemus, jlemus@hawaii.edu

K-12 students are producing quality ocean and water/earth scientific research throughout the world via in-school or after-school programs. These students are readily exposed to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math) practices and are involved with adults and/or senior scientists to investigate earth and ocean processes including testing hypotheses and observing the environment. Sharing their research at an international scientific conference is beneficial to them, their peers, educators and attending scientists. K-12 students who are involved in such ocean and water/earth research as lead author or co-author are encouraged to participate. The goal of this session is to give K-12 students a platform to present their ocean and water/earth related research to scientists, educators and peers in order to network and gain feedback on their presentation and research, and join the ever-growing network of ocean science researchers. K-12 students are encouraged to choose an oral presentation or poster presentation format.

Cross listed Tracks: Education & Outreach

Keywords: Elementary and secondary education

ED10 Fostering the Development of Collaborative Scientists, Projects, and Environments in Research Internships, Graduate Programs, and the Workforce

Organizers:
Joanna York, jyork@udel.edu
Valerie Sloan, vsloan@ucar.edu

Historically, research internships and graduate programs have been structured so that scholars work individually with one advisor on a research project, a practice that often continues into other research environments. For example, an REU intern or graduate student might study one component of a research project with a goal of providing a piece to a puzzle. While this approach has strengths and benefits, scholars may have limited opportunities to learn how to effectively collaborate with each other, and develop skills such as team problem-solving, communication, leadership, and the development of a cohort, practices that are invaluable for the workforce. Inclusivity and collaboration can lead to results that can’t be accomplished by a single individual, and can further the development of a sense of community. In the spirit of this meeting’s theme of the importance of working together, this session will examine ways to foster collaboration among ocean scientists and within projects. In this session, presenters will share effective strategies for developing and running collaborative programs or projects that require interdependence between team members and between teams in research labs, graduate programs, and other settings.

Cross listed Tracks: Education & Outreach

Keywords: Geoscience education research

ED11 Global capacity development in ocean science for sustainable development

Organizers:
Brian Arbic, arbic@umich.edu
Tan Shau (Aileen) Hwai, aileen@usm.my
Edem Mahu, edemmahu@gmail.com
Tashiana Osborne, tashiana@ucsd.edu
Ana Carolina Dias, acesteve@uwaterloo.ca

Oceanography is a global science, and it requires human and technical capacity on a global scale. Currently, ocean science capacity is unevenly distributed around the world. Some consequences of this uneven distribution include: 1) little representation from scientists in under-resourced nations on the steering committees of large international programs, 2) small numbers of lead- and co-authors from under-resourced nations on peer-reviewed oceanography papers, 3) limited measurements from under-resourced regions being included in state-of-the-art observing networks, and 4) low representation in the number of ocean scientists from under-resourced regions at international meetings and conferences. The UN Ocean Decade offers an important opportunity to begin to address and rectify these inequities. This session encourages submissions that advance ocean science capacity and in particular sustainable ocean science capacity - e.g., efforts that try to improve government use of and investment in ocean science, that aim to improve job prospects, etc. Contributions that emphasize participation of scientists from under-resourced nations, or from scientists in under-represented groups in higher-resourced nations, in global observing systems, global decision-making boards, and so on, are especially encouraged. Opportunities will be given to all to delineate contributions to the UN Ocean Decade, and to share indigenous knowledge and culture.

The co-convenors, which include a PhD student in the US, and scientists from Ghana and Malaysia, all have extensive experience in global capacity development. See, for instance, https://coessing.org, https://equisea.org, and https://globaloceancorps.org, among our other projects. We led a capacity development town hall at OSM 2020. The 6-5-30 and eLightning will allow for us to have virtual presentations from scientists who are unable to travel to Hawai'i, including those from under-resourced nations.

Cross listed Tracks: Education & Outreach

Keywords: Diversity; Workforce

For More Information: https://coessing.org

ED12 Undergraduate Research in Marine and Aquatic Sciences

Organizers:
David Fields, dfields@bigelow.org
Lisa Rom, elrom@nsf.gov

Research opportunities are increasingly offered to undergraduate students in an effort to help them understand marine and aquatic sciences and to offer them an opportunity to consider this field as a career. Undergraduates who have conducted research are invited to present their results in this general session that will highlight the wide variety of student research and provide opportunity for interested faculty to discuss your project with you. The Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) program brings large numbers of undergraduate students to marine institutions for summer research programs, and students who have participated in REU programs are particularly invited to submit to this session. Students are not limited to this session, and we encourage any undergraduate student who wishes to submit an abstract to a specialized science session in the subject of her/his research to consider that option as well.

Keywords: Post-secondary education; Evaluation and assessment; Geoscience education research; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

Fish and Fisheries

FF01 The Growing Need of Public-Private Partnerships in Advancing Climate-Ready Fisheries

Organizers:
Lindsey Kraatz, lindsey.kraatz@noaa.gov
Eric Lindstrom, eric.lindstrom@saildrone.com
Jan Newton, janewton@uw.edu
Cisco Werner, cisco.werner@noaa.gov

Climate change and variability pose ongoing challenges for fisheries science and associated management advice. Uncertainties in our assessments impact our coastal communities and associated Blue Economies. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) enable us to better detect, understand, assess, and manage shifting distributions and changing productivity of marine species and ecosystems. Examples of PPPs include, among others, co-funded projects, development of advanced technologies and analytical methods, enhanced abilities to leverage large (“big”) data collections, cooperative research, and citizen science efforts. Such a breadth of PPPs has been shown to be effective in improving our quantitative understanding of our coastal and ocean systems, that in turn impact management strategies, while simultaneously incorporating stakeholder input.

With climate impacts projected to continue to accelerate (e.g., extreme events, loss of ice, shifting stocks, evolving ecosystem structure and function, etc.) the need for PPPs is heightened. We need to sample more broadly and more nimbly, and effectively manage the resulting influx of data, to develop a new understanding of the oceans’ functioning, and thus, to better support the communities that depend on a healthy ocean, and thus strengthen local and global Blue Economies. PPPs occur between local, state, tribal, and federal governments, commercial and recreational fishing industries, private sector, academia, and NGOs. In times of limited budgets and decreasing workforce, partnerships become more critical. This session will bring together natural and social scientists, managers, and stakeholders to share and highlight best-practices and to identify new joint PPP-based activities to facilitate our stewardship of sustainable climate-ready fisheries.

This session will use short overviews of cross-disciplinary and collaborative projects to seed discussion and share knowledge among attendees. The goal is to stimulate and expand climate-ready fisheries science research across agencies, universities, companies, and non-profits to cultivate sustainable partnerships and collaborations. We welcome oral presentations and posters on interdisciplinary and cross-organizational examples of how public-private partnerships are and can be used to answer a breadth of climate-related fisheries science and management questions.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change

Keywords: General or miscellaneous; General or miscellaneous; General or miscellaneous

FF02 Climate Impacts on Marine Fish, Fisheries, and Protected Species

Organizers:
Barbara Muhling, bmuhling@ucsc.edu
Elliott Hazen, Elliott.Hazen@noaa.gov
Nerea Lezama Ochoa, nlezamaochoa@gmail.com
Stephanie Brodie, Stephanie.Brodie@noaa.gov
Bianca Santos, bsantos9@stanford.edu

We invite presentations that explore the observed or modeled response of marine fish, fisheries, and protected species to climate variability and/or climate change. A wide-range of marine organisms will be considered, including invertebrates, fish, reptiles, mammals, and sea birds. Climate forcing can derive from natural variability (i.e. ENSO), anthropogenic climate change, or both. Impacts can derive from changes in physiology, bioenergetics, abundance, distribution, habitat, community structure, reproduction, behavior, and phenology. We also invite presentations that explore climate impacts on marine fisheries in terms of spatial distribution, changing target species and/or gear type, or simply the challenges faced by fisheries management in a changing climate. Studies can be based on the dynamics of marine ecosystems and food webs, populations, or individual species. We also encourage presentations that focus on fish, fisheries, and protected species management strategies (i.e. stock assessments, marine spatial planning) that incorporate climate information.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Fish and Fisheries; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Impacts of global change; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling; Higher trophic levels; Population dynamics and ecology

High Latitude Environments

HL01 Ice-Ocean Interactions and Circulation around the Antarctic Margins

Organizers:
Andrew Stewart, astewart@atmos.ucla.edu
Laura Herraiz-Borreguero, laura.herraizborreguero@csiro.au
Alessandro Silvano, a.silvano@soton.ac.uk
Matthew England, m.england@unsw.edu.au

Processes occurring at or close to the ice-ocean interface around Antarctica influence the state and circulation of a large proportion of the global ocean. The annual cycle of sea ice formation, export and melt is critical to the formation of both Antarctic Bottom Water and Antarctic Intermediate Water, which together fill more than half of the global sub-surface ocean. Inflow of warm Circumpolar Deep Water beneath floating shelves of marine-terminating glaciers promotes retreat of the grounded portion of the ice sheet, and thus sea level rise. Though historically limited by the prohibitive costs of in situ observations and high-resolution models, recent field campaigns and focused model development efforts are now rapidly advancing our understanding of these processes. This session will showcase recent advances in understanding the physical processes occurring in the Antarctic marginal seas, across the Antarctic continental shelf and slope, and within the ocean cavities beneath floating ice shelves. Studies based on observations, numerical models and theory are all welcome. The authors particularly encourage submissions addressing ocean-sea ice interactions, warm water pathways from continental slope to grounding zones, and inter-connectivity between sectors of the Antarctic margins and the broader Southern Ocean.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Oceans; Cryospheric change; Ice mechanics and air/sea/ice exchange processes; Antarctica/Southern Ocean

HL02 The Arctic Ocean's changing Beaufort Gyre

Organizers:
Mary-Louise Timmermans, mary-louise.timmermans@yale.edu
Isabela Le Bras, ilebras@whoi.edu
Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, nadya@nasa.gov
Bill Williams, Bill.Williams@dfo-mpo.gc.ca

The Beaufort Gyre is one of the Arctic Ocean’s main sea-ice and ocean circulation systems, its major freshwater reservoir, and a centerpiece for Arctic and global change. In recent decades, ocean changes in the Beaufort Gyre region have been as prominent as the disappearing sea-ice cover, with conspicuous examples being the marked increases in ocean freshwater and heat content, and ocean acidification. In order to make viable future predictions, it is imperative to understand how the Beaufort Gyre system works and how it is changing. A host of themes are important, including atmosphere-ice-ocean interrelationships, dynamical balances and energetics of the ocean-ice system, and changes in freshwater and heat content with implications for sea-ice, stratification, biogeochemistry and ecosystem response. This session invites submissions that investigate the physical and biogeochemical characteristics and dynamics of the Beaufort Gyre system. We encourage studies that encompass in-situ and remote sensing observations, process studies, and theoretical and modeling approaches to better understand and predict the changing Arctic.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; High Latitude Environments; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Arctic and Antarctic oceanography; Physical and biogeochemical interactions; General circulation; Arctic region

HL03 Ecosystem processes and structure in a changing Arctic

Organizers:
Seth Danielson, sldanielson@alaska.edu
Jacqueline Grebmeier, jgrebmei@umces.edu
Katrin Iken, kbiken@alaska.edu
Lee Cooper, cooper@umces.edu

The rate of atmospheric warming in the Arctic is outpacing that of other regions, and is associated with sea ice loss, warming ocean temperatures, and ecosystem impacts. The resulting cascade of reconfigured ecological and environmental relationships extends to temperature-growth relations, nutrient cycling dynamics, altered seasonality, changing freshwater balances, expanded and contracted species range extensions, and new trophic pathways. In turn, these may each affect community structure and biodiversity, the population status of key species, and relations between humans and marine resources. As environmental change continues, can we anticipate how future Arctic ecosystems will compare to those of the past and present? Will the effects of a changing climate be mirrored across multiple Arctic sectors, or will regional differences exert primary influence? Organizers welcome presentations from all regions of the Arctic examining the drivers, rates, processes, and mechanistic controls that impart structure on any aspect of the high-latitude marine ecosystem.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Fish and Fisheries; High Latitude Environments; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Impacts of global change; Physical and biogeochemical interactionsEcosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling; Arctic region

HL04 Floe-scale sea ice processes: constraints from observations and models

Organizers:
Alek Petty, alek.a.petty@nasa.gov
Georgy Manucharyan, gmanuch@uw.edu

Sea ice characteristics such as concentration, thickness, floe-size, albedo, melt-pond coverage/depth, deformation and fracture statistics depend on the floe-scale response to mechanical and thermodynamical forcing. The heterogeneity of ice characteristics and the wide range of scales associated with the granular nature of sea ice make it challenging to understand and model these floe-scale processes and their impact on atmosphere-ocean energy exchange. Recent advances in computational techniques and the increasing availability of high-resolution sea-ice observations provide opportunities for developing and testing new mathematical frameworks for simulating floe-scale processes, either explicitly or statistically. This session invites contributions involving analyses of remote and in-situ data, novel numerical modeling techniques, and theoretical frameworks aimed at constraining floe-scale thermodynamic and dynamic sea ice processes to improve current and future simulations of the sea ice state.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; High Latitude Environments; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Ice mechanics and air/sea/ice exchange processes

HL06 Advances in understanding the circulation and carbon cycle of the Southern Ocean

Organizers:
Alison Gray, argray@uw.edu
Seth Bushinsky, seth.bushinsky@hawaii.edu
Nancy Williams, nancywilliams@usf.edu
Nicole Lovenduski, nicole.lovenduski@colorado.edu

Long recognized for its unique physical and biogeochemical characteristics, the Southern Ocean exerts an outsized influence on the global carbon cycle, with significant impacts on Earth’s climate. Physical and biogeochemical processes operating at a wide range of spatio-temporal scales play important roles in determining the uptake, storage, and transformation of carbon in the Southern Ocean, which accounts for a substantial portion of the global oceanic uptake of anthropogenic carbon. Yet, because this remote region is challenging to observe and difficult to represent in numerical models, many open questions remain about the drivers and impacts of carbon cycling here. Numerous recent advances have increased understanding of these phenomena, including observations from ships, autonomous platforms, and aircraft, as well as novel dataset syntheses, numerical modeling results, and theoretical considerations. Large discrepancies still exist, however, regarding the mean and variability in Southern Ocean air-sea carbon fluxes, limiting our ability to accurately predict future changes.

This session invites submissions that explore the Southern Ocean carbon cycle and its influence on regional or global climate, at seasonal, interannual, or longer timescales. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the distributions of natural and anthropogenic dissolved inorganic carbon, as well as other carbonate system parameters such as alkalinity, pCO2, and pH; the physical, geochemical, and biological mechanisms that govern these properties and their variability; and projections of how these might evolve in a changing climate. We welcome studies of the open or coastal portions of the Southern Ocean, and the surface and/or ocean interior, based on observations, models, or theory. Contributions that examine air-sea interaction, circulation, or mixing in the Southern Ocean, in the context of cycling of carbon or related biogeochemical properties, are particularly encouraged.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling; Physical and biogeochemical interactions; Climate and interannual variability; Antarctica/Southern Ocean

HL07 Arctic ocean gateways - changes, processes, and impacts

Organizers:
Alexandra Jahn, alexandra.jahn@colorado.edu
Paul Myers, pmyers@ualberta.ca
Craig Lee, craiglee@uw.edu
Michael Karcher, Michael.Karcher@awi.de

The Arctic Ocean connects to the North Atlantic through gateways to the east (Fram Strait and Barents Sea opening) and west (Barrow, Nares and Davis Straits) of Greenland, and to the North Pacific through Bering Strait. Gateway exchanges of heat, freshwater, nutrients and other properties between the Arctic Ocean and the subpolar seas are expected to respond to changing climate, with potentially important implications for Arctic Ocean circulation, sea ice evolution, deep water formation, ocean-ice sheet interactions and ecosystems. Paleo data also shows that gateway fluxes have changed in the past, with important climate impacts. Ongoing observational efforts have focused on quantifying and understanding gateway exchanges. Model simulations provide further data to assess the gateway fluxes and their impacts both in the Arctic Ocean and in the North Atlantic. This session aims to advance understanding of Arctic gateway exchanges, including their drivers and impacts, by bringing together analysis of past, present, and future changes. We invite studies that use observations, proxies, and/or models to analyze the various fluxes through the Arctic gateways and their downstream impacts. This includes, but is not limited to, studies of heat and freshwater fluxes, water masses, biogeochemical fluxes, sea ice fluxes, impacts of gateway fluxes on ocean circulation and biogeochemistry, presentations of new datasets from the Arctic gateways, and future observational strategies for the gateways.

This session has three oral presentation blocks:

HL07 Arctic ocean gateways - Fluxes between Arctic and sub-Arctic 1
HL07 Arctic ocean gateways - Fluxes between Arctic and sub-Arctic 2
HL07 Arctic ocean gateways - Impact on Arctic Ocean processes

Posters from HL07 will be presented as part of a joint poster session: HLP06 High Latitude Environments Posters (H07+H14+H18)

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; High Latitude Environments; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Arctic and Antarctic oceanography; Physical and chemical properties of seawater; Ocean observing systems; Numerical modeling

HL08 The physics and biogeochemistry of melting coastal margins: Interactions between glaciers, permafrost, circulation, sea ice, elemental cycling, and ecosystems

Organizers:
Brice Loose, bloose@uri.edu
Katharine Hendry, K.Hendry@bristol.ac.uk
Andrew Thompson, andrewt@caltech.edu
Fenix Garcia Tigreros, fenixg@uw.edu
Juan Höfer, juanhofer@gmail.com

Frozen coastlines with terrestrial glaciers and subterranean permafrost are entering a state of accelerating melt in both polar oceans, as a consequence of warming and sea level rise. The thermodynamic transformation of ice to water is typically accompanied by buoyancy production in the coastal ocean, leading to significant delivery of freshwater as well as nutrients and organic matter into the photic zone. Plankton and microbes consume these nutrients and drive productive coastal ecosystems such as the Amundsen Sea, the coastal Bering and Chukchi Seas, as well as the fjords of Greenland and Patagonia. In the Arctic, coastal erosion mobilizes terrestrial organic compounds and other permafrost-trapped chemical species within coastal seas. In the Antarctic, glacial melt may supply glacial or sedimentary iron to surface-ocean waters. This session seeks to explore the processes and linkages that arise from delivery of glacial and permafrost melt to the upper ocean: How do these melt processes impact the stratification, sea ice cycles and overturning in coastal seas? Is there an impact on ecosystem biomass and community composition? How far can the downstream impacts of meltwater extend? How do seasonal, episodic, and anticipated future changes impact the delivery of meltwater and nutrients? We welcome submissions from a wide range of perspectives including glaciology, physical oceanography, biogeochemistry, microbial ecology, and convergent studies.

Cross listed Tracks: Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; High Latitude Environments; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger

Keywords: Arctic and Antarctic oceanography; Physical and biogeochemical interactions

HL09 The role of Southern Ocean ecology in the Earth system: integrating across scales, disciplines, and methods

Organizers:
Alexis Bahl, abahl@eoas.ubc.ca
So Kawaguchi, So.Kawaguchi@aad.gov.au
Nadine Johnston, nmj@bas.ac.uk
John Conroy, jaconroy@vims.edu

The Southern Ocean is a key component of the Earth System, influencing global climate processes and supporting unique biological diversity, international fisheries and tourism. Over the coming decades, major shifts in Southern Ocean ecosystems are expected in response to multiple stressors including climate-driven change and harvesting. Yet, the intrinsic environmental drivers of Southern Ocean ecosystem dynamics are not well-understood, thereby introducing uncertainty into projected responses to climate change. Thus identifying and addressing priority research challenges for sampling and integrating modelling methods are essential to reveal the impact of local ecological processes at the circumpolar scale. This requires a detailed understanding of key species, including Antarctic krill which has a dominant ecological role and is also the target of an international fishery. This session is intended to bring together innovative approaches in Southern Ocean ecological research, with an emphasis on Antarctic krill, to improve ecosystem models that represent species dynamics across a range of spatial (regional to circumpolar), temporal (inter-annual to decadal) and organisational (individuals to populations) scales. The scope of this session includes biogeochemistry, food-web interactions, resilience, impacts and feedbacks within the Earth System, conservation, and sustainable resource management. We welcome presentations that highlight field observations, experimental work and modelling of key species, covering aspects such as population dynamics across different space and time scales (e.g. life cycle, past and present distribution and abundance), environmental drivers of distribution (e.g. regional and global models) and future projections of distribution in response to environmental change. Studies that promote collaboration across scientific disciplines and generate links between scientists and fisheries managers for improving management are strongly encouraged.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; High Latitude Environments; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modelingFood webs, structure, and dynamics; Antarctica/Southern Ocean

HL10 Arctic Ocean changes and processes

Organizers:
Benjamin Rabe, benjamin.rabe@awi.de
Alexandra Jahn, alexandra.jahn@colorado.edu
Ying-Chih Fang, ying-chih.fang@mail.nsysu.edu.tw
Yevgeny Aksenov, yka@noc.ac.uk

The central Arctic Ocean is a deep basin divided by various subsurface ridges, and bordering on extensive shallow shelf regions and passages connecting to adjacent seas. Amid large-scale changes in the Arctic sea ice cover, advective pathways, and regional Pacification and Atlantification, recent observational campaigns and numerical simulations have highlighted the importance of the emerging local and regional processes on the changes in the ocean and sea ice. This includes turbulence and eddies.

In recent years, measurements undertaken by multidisciplinary programs have increasingly focused on the annual cycle in the Arctic Ocean, by providing a context for historical in-situ measurements collected mostly in spring and summer. Further, modelling efforts governed by output from the global Coupled Modelling Intercomparison Project (CMIP5/6) and from high-resolution sea ice-ocean regional simulations have led to a more comprehensive understanding the Arctic oceanic variability on a wide range of temporal and spatial scales.

In this session, we welcome contributions based on recent campaigns, such as the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) or those under the umbrella of the Synoptic Arctic Survey (SAS), as well as on the analysis of the long-term datasets of key environmental quantities, such as sea ice concentration, sea ice thickness, freshwater content, macronutrients, carbon and ocean acidification. Modeling studies using CMIP class models and regional high-resolution ice-ocean simulations are welcome, as well as studies combining observations and modeling. We explicitly invite studies of connections in the Arctic Ocean itself, hemispheric linkages to lower latitudes, coupled feedback involving sea-ice, snow and the atmosphere, and interdisciplinary studies addressing biogeochemical processes. We also welcome outreach efforts from school teachers and students who are interested in the present and future of the Arctic.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; Education & Outreach; High Latitude Environments; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Cryospheric change; Arctic and Antarctic oceanography; Arctic region

HL11 Arctic Ocean processes, progress, and potential explored through synthesis supported research

Organizers:
Laura Whitmore, lmwhitmore@alaska.edu
Laramie Jensen, jensenla@uw.edu
Ryan McCabe, rmccabe.ocean@gmail.com

The Arctic Ocean is changing rapidly as a result of global climate change at rates disproportionate to other ocean basins. Changes in stratification, circulation, and ice cover are giving way to a cascade of biogeochemical and ecological changes that are altering the character of the Arctic Ocean. These changes influence the global ocean by modulating freshwater export from the Arctic Ocean to the North Atlantic Ocean, the transfer of chemical constituents, and the connectivity of organismal populations. Because of continued annual sea ice coverage and accessibility barriers; data collection across small (seasonal) and larger (annual to decadal) timescales has been historically difficult. In order to elucidate and ultimately predict the impacts of climate change on the Arctic Ocean system a synthetic and trans-disciplinary effort is valued. In this spirit, we encourage submissions across ecological, chemical, physical, and geological sub-disciplines with special consideration to interdisciplinary approaches and to studies investigating spatial and/or temporal scales.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; High Latitude Environments; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Oceans; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling

HL12 Uncovering the Dark Secrets of the Central Arctic Ecosystem

Organizers:
Carin Ashjian, cashjian@whoi.edu
Emelia Chamberlain, echamber@ucsd.edu
Allison Fong, allison.fong@awi.de
Oliver Müller, oliver.muller@uib.no
Jian Ren, jian.ren@sio.org.cn

The Central Arctic Ocean experiences marked variations in environmental conditions that drive characteristic seasonal swings in productivity with cascading impacts up the trophic structure. Typically, winter was believed to be a period of little activity and near-dormancy for most of the ecosystem. Although much progress has been made during the last decades, comprehensive understanding of the structure and function of Arctic pelagic and sea ice food webs remain somewhat obscure. However, recent comprehensive and interdisciplinary studies, such as the year-long MOSAiC expedition (2019-2020), are revealing new insights and showing that the Central Arctic ecosystem is anything but quiescent in winter. Sustained observations and process studies are also providing windows into phenological shifts. Conceptual and mathematical models which incorporate the ecosystem and its connectivity to other system components can yield better understanding and can predict the impacts of ongoing climate change on the Arctic Ocean. Here, contributions based on observations, experimentation, and/or modeling that advance understanding of the Central Arctic ecosystem year-round activity, seasonal evolution, and interactions with and dependencies on the physical and chemical environments are welcomed.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Fish and Fisheries; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling; Food webs, structure, and dynamics; Diurnal, seasonal, and annual cycles; Carbon cycling

HL13 Coastal Circulations and Biogeochemical Processes in High Latitudes in a Changing Climate

Organizers:
Zhaoru Zhang, zrzhang@sjtu.edu.cn
Sünnje Basedow, sunnje.basedow@uit.no
Walker Smith Jr., wos@vims.edu
Chuning Wang, wangchuning@sjtu.edu.cn
Fernanda Gastelu, mgastelubarcena@ufl.edu

Coastal oceans in high latitudes are characterized by strong temporal and spatial variability, and have been showing increased vulnerability to global climate change. Coastal circulations are affected by local and remote atmospheric circulations, ocean-sea ice interactions and ocean-ice sheet interactions, the variations of which are all potentially associated with major climate modes dominating the extratropical climate variability. Changes in the physical processes can occur over a wide range of temporal and spatial scales.

Changes in physical environments, including circulation, mixing/stratification, sea-ice freezing/melting and enhanced glacial melting/calving, will further induce changes in coastal biogeochemical processes, such as the transport and cycling of nutrients and micronutrients, irradiance availability, the transport and aggregation of phytoplankton and zooplankton, carbon fluxes, and ocean acidification. The physical and biogeochemical processes in coastal areas of high latitudes are closely connected to the open-ocean environment. The intrusion of oceanic water masses onto the continental shelves brings heat and nutrients to the shelf; carbon fixed in the high-productivity coastal areas can be transported off the shelf along with of deep and bottom water masses, and along with transporting surface phytoplankton and zooplankton.

This session is focused on coastal circulations and biogeochemical processes and their connection with the open ocean in high latitude systems in the context of climate change. The variations and mechanisms of these processes can be studied by in situ observations, remote sensing, numerical modelling and theoretical analysis. Understanding these processes are important for predicting the future change in high-latitude coastal oceans based on projected changes in the climate state.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; High Latitude Environments; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Impacts of global change; Arctic and Antarctic oceanography; Coastal processes

HL14 Autonomous Sensing and Monitoring in Polar Environnments

Organizers:
Andreas Marouchos, Andreas.Marouchos@csiro.au
Hanumant Singh, ha.singh@northeastern.edu
Venugopalan Pallayil, venu@nus.edu.sg

The Polar regions, the Arctic, the Antarctic and Greenland, are undergoing significant change due to anthropogenic forcing. Despite their critical importance in understanding climate change, these regions remain some of the most undersampled regions on the planet. This session will address the role autonomous sensing and monitoring to enhance our ability to map these areas both spatially and temporally, especially in areas that are remote and difficult to get to, and to obtain measurements that span winter, spring and fall in the austral regions as opposed to most measurements that are made in austral summers.
We will engage the engineering community and field scientists across a variety of disciplines to build bridges across these somewhat disparate communities.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Arctic and Antarctic oceanography; Ocean observing systemsEcosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling; Arctic region

Co-sponsors: IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society

HL15 Air-Ice-Ocean Interactions in a Changing Arctic

Organizers:
Craig Lee, craiglee@uw.edu
Sylvia Cole, scole@whoi.edu
Jeremy Wilkinson, jpw28@bas.ac.uk
Tim Stanton, stanton@nps.edu
Scott Harper, scott.l.harper@navy.mil

Significant Arctic warming, accompanied by changes in sea ice extent, thickness distribution and other properties, motivates efforts to understand how these changes affect the complex interplay between atmosphere, ice, and upper ocean. This includes impacts on Arctic Ocean circulation, and water mass exchange between the Arctic and subpolar Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and between the shelves and deep basins. This session welcomes contributions focusing on any aspect of air-ice-ocean interaction, including ocean processes that currently influence, or have the potential to influence the ice pack, or atmospheric or sea ice processes that impact upper ocean structure, and the feedbacks between them. Topics of interest include the dynamics of the seasonal ice zone, momentum, heat and freshwater exchange, implications for biological and biogeochemical processes, and the impact of heightened seasonality in the Arctic Basin.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Ice mechanics and air/sea/ice exchange processes; Upper ocean and mixed layer processes; Arctic region

HL16 Sources and consequences of Southern Ocean freshening: Toward synthesising observations and modelling

Organizers:
Torge Martin, tomartin@geomar.de
Inga Smith, inga.smith@otago.ac.nz

The Southern Ocean is consistently freshening, particularly in the upper layers and near the Antarctic coast. Freshening has been attributed to an increase in precipitation, basal melting of ice shelves and enhanced sea-ice melt and export. Freshening has also been observed in the abyssal Antarctic bottom water, formed close to the Antarctic coast and exported globally. The exact proportionality is highly uncertain, but all these processes contribute to formation of sea ice through strengthening surface stratification, changes in ocean circulation, and sea level rise. Implications for the oceanic heat content and the stability of the Antarctic ice sheet are likely but not yet well known. As the climate system continues to warm the relative magnitude of these processes and associated feedbacks may change leading to uncertain impacts on polar and global climate.
With this session we aim beyond sharing most recent research and plan for an engaged exchange among the scientific communities of ocean and cryosphere, modeling and observations, early career researchers and senior experts to examine the current state of knowledge on Southern Ocean freshening and discuss future research. We are particularly interested in work closing the gap between observations and modelling; this includes coordinated monitoring approaches and targeted joint model experiments. We specifically welcome ideas and proposals for highlighting the Southern Ocean in the just starting UN decade of ocean science.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; High Latitude Environments; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger

Keywords: Sea level change; Arctic and Antarctic oceanography; Climate and interannual variability; Ice mechanics and air/sea/ice exchange processes

HL17 The Arctic Ocean Carbon Cycle: Past, present and future

Organizers:
Mike DeGrandpre, michael.degrandpre@umontana.edu
Brent Else, belse@ucalgary.ca
Claudine Hauri, chauri@alaska.edu

The Arctic Ocean has dynamic and diverse biogeochemical areas ranging from some of the most productive coastal waters in the world to large oligotrophic open ocean basins. Organic and inorganic carbon therefore naturally vary significantly in time and space. Overlying this natural variability is the rapidly changing physical and chemical environment of the Arctic Ocean driven by climate change and ocean acidification. Loss of ice cover, changing freshwater inputs, warming and changes in broadscale circulation all compound the inherent complexity of the AO carbon cycle. For example, primary production trends are highly uncertain because of the interplay between nutrient fluxes, increased solar irradiance, stratification and wind-driven mixing. Making progress on understanding how these mechanisms currently regulate carbon uptake, export, and air-sea exchange requires intensive measurement programs, ideally during all seasons. Further efforts are also needed to develop more accurate coupled physical-biogeochemical models. In this session, we welcome presentations from studies focused on the AO carbon cycle, including observational and model studies of primary production, nutrient fluxes, inorganic and organic carbon, air-sea CO2 fluxes, ocean acidification and related physical forcings.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; High Latitude Environments; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Technologies and Observatories

Keywords: Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling; Arctic and Antarctic oceanography; Physical and biogeochemical interactions

For More Information: http://hs.umt.edu/chemistry/people/default.php?s=DeGrandpre

HL18 Ocean Science for Ocean Worlds

Organizers:
Kevin Arrigo, arrigo@stanford.edu
Kate Craft, Kate.Craft@jhuapl.edu
Alison Murray, Alison.Murray@dri.edu
Samuel Howell, samuel.m.howell@jpl.nasa.gov

Over the last two decades, discoveries within our solar system have revealed that ice-covered oceans do not only exist as extreme environments at Earth’s polar regions, but also represent the norm for a host of recently discovered ocean worlds in the outer solar system – 5 moons of Jupiter and Saturn (plus, potentially, moons of Neptune & Uranus, the asteroid Ceres, Pluto, and more) that all host large volume oceans beneath a global outer ice-shell. In the cases of Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus, those oceans are composed of salty water tens to ~100 kilometers deep, underlain by a rocky seafloor with potential hydrothermal activity. These conditions may offer the potential for habitability and, perhaps, life. Accordingly, much attention is now being turned toward the oceans of these ocean worlds, and the expertise that ocean scientists could provide to inform further exploration. In 2024, NASA will launch a new Flagship Mission, Europa Clipper, to conduct extensive remote sensing of Europa’s exterior and to probe the interior with gravity and radio science, radar, and magnetometry. Exciting new mission concepts and supporting technologies are already under development to both land on and sample the near subsurface ice of ocean worlds, with the ultimate goal of accessing their interior oceans. This session will bring together ocean scientists, planetary scientists and engineers who study a wide range of extreme environments ranging from ice-covered polar oceans to the deep sea, to help inform what we should expect and prepare for in the future exploration of oceans beyond Earth, including any life they might host. Contributions including observational, experimental, model-based and technology-based approaches that study the ocean, the ice-ocean or seafloor-ocean interfaces to explore structure, circulation, biogeochemical processes, requirements for habitability and of life are welcome.

Cross listed Tracks: Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; Ocean Technologies and Observatories

Keywords: Ice mechanics and air/sea/ice exchange processes; Microbiology and microbial ecology

Islands and Reefs

IS01 Legacy effects of marine heatwaves on coral reef ecosystems

Organizers:
Kristen Brown, ktbrown@sas.upenn.edu
Veronica Radice, vradice@odu.edu

Coral reefs are among the most threatened ecosystems on Earth, with about half of the world’s reef-building corals lost in the past few decades. While the decline of coral reefs is attributable to a range of stressors, more recently, increasing ocean temperatures are considered among the greatest threats. As climate change intensifies, marine heatwaves are becoming more frequent and are now occurring several times a decade and in back-to-back years. The composition and function of coral reef ecosystems has changed as a result of prolonged and repetitive thermal stress and mass coral bleaching that has led to substantial declines in reef-building corals. With each marine heatwave, the response of organisms and trajectories of ecosystems are becoming more contingent on previous disturbances.

This session invites presentations on emerging insights and new discoveries that focus on the legacy effects of marine heatwaves on coral reef ecosystems. Presentations that highlight developments in our understanding of how prior experience and conditions alter subsequent responses to thermal stress at ecological, biogeochemical and/or physiological scales, are encouraged through, for example: (i) observations of shifts in ecosystem structure and function across habitats, reefs or regions, (ii) changing biogeochemical responses from the organism (e.g., trophic strategies) to ecosystem level (e.g., net ecosystem calcification), and/or (iii) identifying physiological properties of a more resilient organism, if there are physiological trade-offs to survival, and any lasting impacts from thermal stress.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Islands and Reefs; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Impacts of global change; Coral reef systems; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling; Population dynamics and ecology

IS02 Innovative science and technology for assessing coral reef health

Organizers:
Colleen Hansel, chansel@whoi.edu
Aran Mooney, amooney@whoi.edu
Amy Apprill, aapprill@whoi.edu
Yogi Girdhar, yogi@whoi.edu

The health and global distribution of coral reefs are declining at an alarming rate in large part due to bleaching, disease, and other human disturbances. To save coral reefs it is imperative that ocean science takes a cue from human medicine by adopting a proactive approach to reef organismal health. Specifically, identifying and monitoring signatures of health are essential for early detection of underlying stress, disease, and metabolic disorders prior to the onset of visible symptoms. A number of studies have begun unraveling the controls on the coral immune system, the responses of the coral holobiont to external stressors, and the evolution of coral stress and disease resistance. Yet, the absolute physical and biogeochemical conditions that allow for and define a healthy reef remain unresolved.

The successful development and adoption of a diagnostics platform for assessing coral health requires the bridging of scientific disciplines, execution of extensive field campaigns, and the convergence of science and engineering to develop critical technologies and sensing capabilities. The goal of this session is to bring together a broad spectrum of scientists and engineers to discuss current advances in our understanding of the controls on and mechanisms underlying coral health, and the current and emerging physical, chemical, biological, and deep-learning methodologies, sensors, and technologies allowing for an improved ability to assess coral reef health and function. We welcome talks that describe current science and engineering advances in coral reef science, as well as talks demonstrating how science in parallel ecosystems (e.g., seaweed aquaculture) could be adopted and applied to further coral health science.

Cross listed Tracks: Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Islands and Reefs; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade; Ocean Technologies and Observatories

Keywords: Impacts of global change; Coral reef systems; Instruments, sensors, and techniques; Microbiology and microbial ecology

Marine Ecology and Biodiversity

ME01 From nutrients and phytoplankton to fish, and back: understanding bottom-up and top-down mechanisms shaping energy and mass flux in marine food webs

Organizers:
Gregory Britten, gregleebritten@gmail.com
Rubao Ji, rji@whoi.edu
Joel Llopiz, jllopiz@whoi.edu
Camila Serra-Pompei, camsp@mit.edu
Mridul Thomas, mridulkthomas@gmail.com

Food webs arise from a combination of bottom-up and top-down trophic interactions through which energy and mass flow from phytoplankton to zooplankton, fish, and higher predators. Predicting food web structure and dynamics requires a mechanistic understanding of bottom-up and top-down processes across spatial and temporal scales. Resolving such processes will help anticipate how food webs will be impacted by changing environmental conditions. Key questions to resolve include, among others, how changes in resource supply and temperature alter productivity across trophic levels, food web connectivity, and how changes at one trophic level may propagate up and down the food web; for example, via trophic amplification or trophic cascades.

This session calls for studies that focus on understanding the processes shaping food webs via bottom-up and top-down trophic interactions. We are interested in how such processes relate to natural and/or anthropogenic disturbances, biological/physical drivers, and their biogeochemical/ecological consequences. We encourage theoretical, modelling, experimental and observational studies that relate energy and mass flow in planktonic, nektonic, or ‘end-to-end’ trophic systems. Trophic connections to fisheries, resource harvesting, and conservation are also encouraged. Specific topics may include, but are not limited to: (1) new approaches to quantify top-down and bottom-up effects using laboratory experiments, field observations, and statistical or dynamic modeling; (2) links to ecological processes such as trophic amplification and cascades, phenological shifts; and how bottom-up and top-down processes interact; and (3) implications for individual behavior, life-history traits, population dynamics, biogeochemical cycling, biodiversity, and ecosystem productivity.

More broadly, we hope this session helps connect oceanographic and ecological communities focused specifically on lower or upper trophic level processes in order to build a more holistic understanding of marine ecosystems.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Fish and Fisheries; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Food webs, structure, and dynamics; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling; Higher trophic levels; Population dynamics and ecology

ME02 The size structure of aquatic ecosystems: from theory to applications

Organizers:
Moritz Schmid, schmidm@oregonstate.edu
Maria Grigoratou, mgrigoratou@Gmri.org
Renato Quiñones Bergeret, rquinone@udec.cl

Organisms in aquatic systems span a vast size range, from plankton in the nanometer range to fishes and whales in the meter range. Body size is a key biological trait involved in processes such as metabolic rates, generation time, and predator-prey interactions, which in turn define food web structure and functioning. Body size is also a powerful tool for measuring the impacts of climate change (e.g., phytoplankton size changes due to strengthening stratification and nutrient limitation) and other anthropogenic disturbances, such as overfishing. Scientific approaches that use body size to better understand aquatic systems include functional trait ecology, size-based ecosystem indicators, as well as size spectrum theory and modeling. Size-based models and indicators can be powerful management tools in fisheries research and spatial management. Size-based approaches to studying aquatic ecosystems also have the advantage of being less reliant on taxonomy than more traditional approaches, thus allowing for synoptic sampling of larger areas. However, new developments in technologies such as imaging and acoustics in combination with deep learning are effective at providing size as well as taxonomic information on plankton and fish, thereby enabling a powerful amalgamation of approaches. We invite submissions that further our understanding of ecosystem functioning using size-based approaches ranging from theory to application, and from the pelagic to the benthic zones.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; Fish and Fisheries; High Latitude Environments; Islands and Reefs; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Impacts of global change; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling; Instruments, sensors, and techniques; Legislation and regulations

ME03 Mixotrophs and Mixotrophy: Driving the Direction of Future Research

Organizers:
Nicole Millette, nmillette@vims.edu
Karen Stamieszkin, karens@vims.edu
Holly Moeller, holly.moeller@lifesci.ucsb.edu
Rebecca Gast, rgast@whoi.edu
Suzana Leles, leles@usc.edu

Aquatic plankton have historically been categorized using a false dichotomy of either heterotrophs (strict phagotrophs) or autotrophs (strict phototrophs). It is now accepted that many species fall on a spectrum between these two trophic strategies, and are called mixotrophs. A wide range of research objectives and methods are needed to advance our understanding of mixotrophs and mixotrophy, but methodological advances have been limited, especially regarding natural communities in the environment. Scientists’ ability to conduct in situ studies of mixotrophs requires advancements in current methods for detecting them and their activity. With increasing attention on mixotrophy research, the scientific community is primed to take major steps forward but consensus on the most pressing mixotrophy research topics and collaboratively defined paths forward for methodological development is needed to foster collaboration and advancement. This session will bring together a cross section of modelers, experimental researchers and observationalists who are interested in discussing top priority mixotrophy research needs and promising methodological advancements that can be used in achieving them. The session builds off discussions from an Ocean Carbon & Biogeochemistry (OCB)-funded working group, and looks to incorporate input from the diversity of research backgrounds present at OSM.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Phytoplankton; Zooplankton; Food webs, structure, and dynamics; Instruments, sensors, and techniques

For More Information: https://www.us-ocb.org/mixotrophs-and-mixotrophy-working-group/

ME04 Getting things right: Sex analysis for ocean science and conservation in response to climate change

Organizers:
Elena Gissi, elena.gissi@cnr.it
Robert Ellis, R.P.Ellis@exeter.ac.uk
Sylvaine Giakoumi, s.giakoumi@uq.edu.au
Jorge Torre Cosio, jtorre@cobi.org.mx

This session explores innovation, discoveries, and challenges for sex analysis in marine research to enable adaptation and mitigation of climate change (CC). Sex analysis is crucial for marine management and adaptation in response to CC. CC can differently affect marine organisms because of sex-based differences. Sex-based responses at species level can impact intraspecific relationships and communities. Omitting sex and sex analysis can limit our understanding of ecological dynamics in response to CC, and the effectiveness of conservation management.

This scientific session invites work from across disciplines that have addressed the response of marine organisms to CC to reflect on the role of sex as a biological variable in their research design, analysis, and interpretation. Challenges and solutions to overcoming potential confounding effects of not including sex will be shared among participants.

This session will lay the foundation for establishing a network of scientists and conservation practitioners pioneering sex analysis integration in a broad suite of research topics, management problems, environments, and methodologies, to share challenges and solutions to advance ocean science, management and conservation.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade

Keywords: Impacts of global change; General or miscellaneous; Ecological prediction; Techniques applicable in three or more fields

ME05 Roles of the marine mobilome in the diversification of bacteria and archaea

Organizers:
Robert Morris, morrisrm@uw.edu
Stephen Giovannoni, giovanns@oregonstate.edu
Benjamin Knowles, bwknowles@ucla.edu

The mobilome is made up of mobile genetic elements like viruses, plasmids, transposons, and integrons. This genetic reservoir fosters rapid evolutionary responses to changing environmental conditions by giving cells access to a broader range of genetic material and new functions. The genetic elements that comprise the mobilome actively contribute to the genetic diversification and evolution of bacteria and archaea by inserting, deleting, or inverting chromosomes. Viruses that integrate into the genomes of bacteria comprise up to 20% of bacterial DNA. Their ability to transfer genetic information from one host to another restructures genomes and can enhance host fitness. Viruses and conjugative plasmids in archaea are also common and have the potential to impact cell function and host adaptation. Identifying elements of the marine mobilome that regulate the flow of genetic information within microbial communities is critical to understanding microbial adaptation to past, present, and future conditions in the oceans. The proposed session seeks submissions aimed at identifying interactions and mechanisms that link bacteria and archaea with the genetic elements that restructure their genomes, contribute to their diversity, enhance host fitness, and impact marine biogeochemistry.

Cross listed Tracks: Marine Ecology and Biodiversity

Keywords: Microbiology and microbial ecology; Population dynamics and ecology

ME06 The Fragile Food Web: Dynamics and impacts of gelatinous zooplankton and other understudied organisms

Organizers:
Adam Greer, atgreer@uga.edu
Marc Frischer, Marc.Frischer@skio.uga.edu
Laura Treible, laura.treible@skio.uga.edu
Deidre Gibson, deidre.gibson@hamptonu.edu

Quantifying the abundance, trophic links, and other ecologically significant interactions between organisms and their environment is critical for understanding any ecosystem. In the marine environment, our understanding of the food web is generally biased towards hard-bodied organisms, such as crustaceans, that survive conventional net sampling, chemical preservation, and are easily cultivated in the laboratory. Coastal and open ocean environments, however, often contain large populations of soft-bodied organisms that are difficult to sample. These organisms include gelatinous zooplankton (e.g., ctenophores, cnidarian medusae, and thaliaceans) that often form large blooms and fragile protists that can be found in large aggregates, colonial forms, or chains that play an important role in carbon cycling. In this session, we invite presentations that explore new approaches to understand the biology, ecology, and contributions to biogeochemical cycling of gelatinous zooplankton and other organisms that, in nature, exhibit fragile structures that are difficult to detect. Together, these historically neglected organisms and their ecologically relevant traits comprise the “fragile food web.” We invite studies that explore new sampling approaches, such as in situ imaging and acoustics, describing the physics, biology, and ecology in either laboratory or field settings, or modeling studies that predict abundances, distributions, and transport in relation to physical and chemical properties of the ocean. We are interested in attracting interdisciplinary studies that incorporate multiple scales of observation – from fine-scale interactions to continental or global scale dynamics. This session will bring together biologists, oceanographers, and modelers to describe the dynamics of these understudied organisms, their important role in coastal and open ocean ecosystems, and the path forward to integrate these findings into our broader understanding of ocean ecosystem functioning.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Zooplankton; Phytoplankton; Food webs, structure, and dynamics; Population dynamics and ecology

ME07 Marine microplastics: Occurrence, transport, effects, and solutions

Organizers:
Susanne Brander, susanne.brander@oregonstate.edu
Elise Granek, graneke@pdx.edu

Plastic pollution is recognized as an emerging stressor to marine ecosystems globally, threatening both organism and environmental health, with potential effects on human health. Ingestion of synthetic particles and fibers has been documented in a variety of marine species, from zooplankton and sessile invertebrates to fish and marine mammals.

Microplastics are a complex suite of pollutants, and thus exposure can exert a wide array of effects on marine organisms. Though many studies have documented occurrence, and some have documented effects of microplastics on cellular/subcellular, organ, and organism functioning, large gaps remain in understanding the potential impacts of different types of microplastics at environmentally relevant concentrations on taxa, ranging from estuarine to open ocean, and across species. We are also still working to understand the mechanisms behind fate and transport, using global and regional scale models to predict the directionality and deposition of plastic particles across sizes, and elucidating how weathering over time can cause changes in density and environmental fate. Finally, as microplastics continue to be recognized as a threat, regulatory and non-regulatory solutions are under development and early implementation. These include engineered solutions to address sources as well as legislation to require application of some of these solutions, such as source reduction.

Presentations addressing sources, transport, occurrence, effects, and solutions to the microplastic challenge across diverse marine and estuarine taxa and scales are welcome. The session will highlight field and laboratory research investigating fate, transport, exposure, and effects as well as policy work. Studies that examine the combined effects of microplastics and climate change-related stressors or phenomena, such as alterations in ocean currents, acidification, hypoxia, increased temperature, varied salinity, or species interactions are encouraged.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Fish and Fisheries; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade

Keywords: General or miscellaneous; Science policy; New fields

For More Information: https://www.pnwmicroplastics.org/

ME09 Exploring and Characterizing Deep and Coastal Ocean Soundscapes

Organizers:
Adrienne Copeland, adrienne.copeland@noaa.gov
Robert Dziak, robert.p.dziak@noaa.gov
Ana Sirovic, asirovic@tamug.edu
DelWayne R Bohnenstiehl, drbohnen@ncsu.edu

The ocean is vast, sparsely charted, deep and underexplored. The physical properties of the ocean enable sound waves to propagate and be detected over very long, at times even ocean basin-scale distances. Marine soundscape studies can therefore often provide unique insight into the many biological, geological, physical, and anthropogenic processes at work within the ocean. For example, many marine animals, from shrimp to whales, use sound to communicate and assess their environment. Major storms, the breakup of ice sheets, submarine volcanism and ocean floor seismicity can all be studied by tracking the unique sound signatures associated with these phenomena. In 2020, the economic slow-down associated with the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in decreased ship traffic worldwide, leading to a truly unprecedented ocean “quieting” event that may provide new insight into anthropogenic noise and its impacts on marine life. This session aims to explore the holistic use of sound to explore and characterize deep and coastal ocean sound sources, levels and propagation conditions, and assess human-made sound impacts on marine ecosystems.

Cross listed Tracks: Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; Fish and Fisheries; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity

Keywords: General or miscellaneous

ME10 Evaluating changing ocean conditions for marine social-ecological systems including applications for fisheries, aquaculture, and ecosystem-based management

Organizers:
Julie Kellner, jbkellner@gmail.com
Kirstin Holsman, kirstin.holsman@noaa.gov
Paula Fratantoni, paula.fratantoni@noaa.gov

This session will showcase investigations of the impacts of changing ocean conditions on marine communities across a range of spatial and temporal scales using a variety of experimental, observational, and modeling techniques. Presentations that discuss novel approaches and tools for evaluating climate processes that influence population dynamics and ecology, community diversity and assembly, food web complexity, and biogeography across a broad spectrum of trophic guilds (e.g., microbes to megafauna) and habitats (intertidal to deep sea) are strongly encouraged. Especially welcome are studies that evaluate climate impacts on coupled social-ecological systems and explore adaptation efficacy and climate-informed approaches for managing fisheries, aquaculture, and ecosystem structure and dynamics, including research that provides input to help guide sustainable ecosystem-based management of ocean resources.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; Fish and Fisheries; Islands and Reefs; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Impacts of global change; Ecological prediction; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling; Population dynamics and ecology

ME11 Impacts of ecological interactions on marine ecosystem dynamics and biodiversity: New insights from theory, models, and field measurements

Organizers:
C Brock Woodson, bwoodson@uga.edu
Steven Litvin, litvin@mbari.org
Natalie Cohen, cohen@uga.edu
Adam Greer, atgreer@uga.edu

Ocean ecosystems comprise the largest living space on the planet. Understanding the behavior, physiology, and ecology of marine organisms in the context of their chemical and physical environments and species interactions is key to advancing our understanding of biogeochemistry, biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Multiple general concepts in ecology have originated from marine systems, including ecological stoichiometry, trophic cascades, and the match/mismatch hypothesis. However, a fundamental hurdle in advancing our understanding of ecological processes in the ocean remains the traditional boundary between ecology and oceanography. In this session, we seek to blur this boundary by bringing together oceanographers and ecologists posing questions about ocean ecosystems that bridge empirical investigations with ecological theory and process models. We welcome both theoretical and empirical research addressing ecological interactions and biodiversity across a range of scales and trophic levels, with particular emphasis on the integration of field sampling, ecological theory, and modeling aimed to reveal the processes structuring ocean ecosystems. Presentations may include observational or experimental approaches, ranging from microscopy, imaging, and remote sensing, to molecular, trait-based, or isotopic tools, with the aim to characterize variability in diet, diversity, abundance, or physiology in response to perturbations and interactions. We especially look to highlight recent advances since 2020 that chart a path forward towards improving our understanding of marine ecosystem functioning

Cross listed Tracks: Fish and Fisheries; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling

ME12 The importance of benthic fauna in modern ocean- understanding patterns and processes

Organizers:
Punyasloke Bhadury, pbhadury@iiserkol.ac.in
Jeroen Ingels, jingels@fsu.edu

The climate, food security and sustainable livelihoods of millions of people globally are strongly influenced by oceanic ecosystems. Oceanic biodiversity from coastal zones to the deep-sea supportsmajor ecosystem level processes and sustains blue economy worldwide. Benthic macrofauna and meiofauna are important ecosystem players everywhere on the seafloor mediating numerous processesincluding biogeochemical cycling of carbon and nitrogen, trophic interactions, microbial facilitation, symbiosis and epibiosis, among others. As part of this session submissions are welcome covering benthic faunal biogeography and patterns across ocean basin scales with emphasis on benthic meiofauna and macrofauna and the importance of meiofauna and macrofauna in mediating major ecosystem level processes. We invite submissions focusing on coastal habitats, including mangroves and estuaries, shelf systems, and bathyal to hadal ecosystems. We also welcome submissions from researchers investigating interactions between invertebrates and microbes, including the role of benthic fauna in influencing the structure of microbial communities such as bacteria and resulting elemental cycling including carbon cycling. Studies that have incorporated benthic meiofauna to understand trophic level food webs using modelling approaches are also encouraged as part of this scientific session. In particular, we would like to support submissions from researchers who are part of international collaborative frameworks (e.g. linking early career researchers from north with south) , and/or are using new technologies such as next-generation sequencing (e.g. Illumina, Nanopore), artificial-intelligence and robust imaging that provide a new and deeper mechanistic understanding of the importance of the structure and functions of benthic fauna in oceanic environments.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Benthic processes, benthos; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling; Instruments, sensors, and techniques

ME13 Marine Life 2030: Advancing Earth Observations and the Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON) to Measure and Interpret Marine Biodiversity for Global Sustainability

Organizers:
Jeffrey Runge, jeffrey.runge@maine.edu
Maury Estes, maury.estes@nsstc.uah.edu
Frank Muller-Karger, carib@usf.edu
Gabrielle Canonico, gabrielle.canonico@noaa.gov

The global economy is linked to the diversity of life in the sea and to healthy marine ecosystems. Earth Observation (EO) technologies, from satellite remote sensing to in situ optical and acoustic sensors, ‘omics’ tools and new machine learning approaches, have opened new opportunities to map and monitor marine life diversity, distribution, and abundance from local to global ocean scales. Consistent data standards and sharing protocols for essential ocean and biodiversity variables are now needed and will benefit the integrated research and usage of data by end users.

Sustainable management of the ocean requires ecological forecasting in areas such as marine megafauna abundance and distribution, change in plankton biomass, diversity and trophic efficiencies and health of seagrass and coral communities. Advanced mechanistic understanding of relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in different marine ecosystems is needed. Here we call for participants and presenters to address the measurement and interpretation of marine biodiversity in a range of marine environments (e.g., continental shelves, the deep sea, and coastal habitats including estuaries, wetlands, and coral reefs) across latitudinal gradients and in the context of a changing ocean. Presentations from the perspective of societal needs for biodiversity and ecosystem function information are welcome. Through shared knowledge and experiences this session hopes to broaden participation and ongoing discussions between existing networks (e.g., Marine BON, a theme of GEO BON, the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network) and the broader scientific community and will help inform development of the Marine Life 2030 Programme for the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (the Ocean Decade).

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Education & Outreach; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Informal education; Regional climate change; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling; Decision making under uncertainty

For More Information: https://marinebon.org/

ME14 Infectious Disease Spread and Impact in a Changing Ocean

Organizers:
Drew Harvell, cdh5@cornell.edu
Colleen Burge, colleen.burge@wildlife.ca.gov
Maya Groner, maya.groner@gmail.com
Eileen Hofmann, hofmann@ccpo.odu.edu

Warming in the oceans caused by climate change increases the risk of disease outbreaks in valuable marine organisms and habitats. Marine infectious diseases are increasingly impacting critical coastal ecosystems from tropical coral reefs to temperate seagrasses, with consequent effects on the physiology, distribution, productivity, and interactions of marine organisms. Many aspects of marine diseases, such as the transmission modes used by pathogens to move between hosts, are poorly understood. Quantitative estimates of the rates and extent of transmission mechanisms, such as contact and waterborne, and the impact of marine diseases on ecosystem functioning are knowledge gaps limiting our understanding of marine disease processes. The effects of primary and secondary host and pathogen genetics in mediating the disease process and transmission also remain to be quantified. This session is intended to bring together studies that consider seasonal and spatial dynamics of disease processes and transmission, impacts of climate warming and multiple stressors on disease processes, and the effects of pathogen-host interactions and local interactions within food webs, with the intent of providing a venue for synthesis of current understanding. Oral and poster presentations that report experimental (field and laboratory), data syntheses, and modelling studies that elucidate marine disease processes and disease transmission are encouraged.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity

Keywords: Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling

ME15 New Solutions for New Data: Machine Learning for in Situ Observations of Aquatic Life

Organizers:
David Greenberg, david.greenberg@hereon.de
Ketil Malde, Ketil.Malde@uib.no
Klas Ove Möller, klas.moeller@hereon.de
Rainer Kiko, rainer.kiko@obs-vlfr.fr

The processes controlling the abundance and distribution of marine and limnic organisms are critically important for understanding ecosystem dynamics and health. Recently, rapid progress in techniques for in situ observation of aquatic life has revealed communities and food webs with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution and clarified links to biogeochemical and environmental factors. Next-generation techniques (e.g. optical and acoustic) will be deployed on observation platforms such as AUVs, Argo floats, moorings, and aerial drones.

These advances have already begun producing data volumes inconceivable in the recent past, and time-intensive manual data analysis with as limited accuracy, objectivity and reproducibility is no longer feasible. Instead, we require automatic, accurate, flexible and where possible real-time analysis. Machine learning offers a flexible toolset for classification, segmentation and feature identification in large-scale observational data.

This session focuses on recent progress in this new class of methods: outstanding challenges, quality checks, harmonization with existing workflows, intercalibration of instruments & outputs, generalization tests, generation of benchmark datasets and incorporation of humans into analysis pipelines. We welcome presentations on emerging technologies and technical advances, with particular emphasis on those yielding insights into ecological and biogeochemical processes in aquatic ecosystems. We also welcome critical evaluation and comparison of methodologies and identification of future analysis needs. The session aims for closer communications between marine/limnic and computer scientists to understand the needs, challenges, and possibilities of in situ observation technology and to enable status monitoring and sustainable management.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Fish and Fisheries; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Technologies and Observatories

Keywords: Machine learning; Zooplankton; Instruments, sensors, and techniquesEcosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling

ME16 Pelagic biodiversity: assessment, evolution, maintenance, and stewardship

Organizers:
Tracey Sutton, tsutton1@nova.edu
Anela Choy, anela@ucsd.edu
Steve Haddock, haddock@mbari.org
Bruce Robison, robr@mbari.org

Though still understudied relative to coastal systems, pelagic ecosystems, particularly deep-pelagic systems, have received a revival of interest of late. Faunal inventories of the deep-pelagic biota are far from complete for most of the global ocean, but great strides have been made in biodiversity assessment owing to technological advances paired with morphological and molecular taxonomy. Likewise, advances in biochemical analyses, remote sensing, numerical modeling, and computational power have facilitated a greater understanding of the complexity, linkages, and emergent properties of pelagic ecosystems. Our celebration of this new era of multidisciplinary research is tempered by the realization of increasing threats to pelagic biodiversity via industrial activity and its climatic consequences; recent papers pertaining to such threats indicate taxon-specific vulnerability and resilience to specific stressors. In this session we invite presentations pertaining to pelagic diversity, with emphasis on assessment (field and laboratory methodology), evolution (speciation, resource partitioning), maintenance (community structure and drivers), and conservation of pelagic biodiversity. If feasible, we propose a synthesis paper co-authored by presenters and attendees as an output product of this session.

Cross listed Tracks: Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity

Keywords: Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling

ME17 Marine Symbiosis: A key player in the trophic transfer of nutrients and chemical transformations throughout the ocean

Organizers:
Jessica Mitchell, jessicamitchell@fas.harvard.edu
Brooke Travis, brooke_travis@fas.harvard.edu

Marine microbial communities are responsible for half of the planet’s primary productivity. In addition, their array of diverse metabolisms plays a central role in biogeochemical cycles and ecosystem functioning in the ocean. In recent years, the importance of microbially mediated nutrient fluxes that occur within animal-microbe symbiotic associations, including relationships with bacteria, archaea, protists, and phages, has been well established. In benthic environments, such as hydrothermal vents or cold seeps, microbially mediated chemosynthesis can support entire ecosystems and revive other energy-depleted benthic habitats. In addition, microbial communities can also be transported throughout the water column via nektonic animals. The importance of these symbiotic associations in the marine biogeochemical cycle is still largely unconstrained. This session aims to highlight diverse symbiotic relationships and how they influence the biogeochemical cycle of the ocean by gathering researchers who investigate animal-microbe symbioses at all depths. We particularly invite studies that couple omics data to realized metabolic function, with a preference for experimental techniques that include flux measurements and/or modeling.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Symbiosis

ME18 Advances in seascape ecology for understanding marine spatial patterning and complexity

Organizers:
Simon Pittman, sjpittman@gmail.com
Connie Kot, connie.kot@duke.edu
Julie Kellner, jbkellner@gmail.com
Lisa Wedding, lisa.wedding@ouce.ox.ac.uk
Miraflor Santos, msantos@whoi.edu

Over a half century has passed since MacArthur and Wilson’s seminal 1967 monograph on island biogeography. Since then, the field of spatial ecology applied to the marine environment has progressed to include greater understanding of habitat complexity, drivers of species distribution, and ecological connectivity. Recent advances in observational technologies and modeling techniques have enabled a greater ability to explore spatial patterns at multiple scales, increasing our understanding of marine ecosystems, while also allowing for the expansion of research to relatively remote marine ecosystems such as the deep sea. Further, theoretical advancements in the way we conceptualize and study marine ecosystems has expanded as landscape ecology principles are applied across the seascape. This session will focus on highlighting theoretical advancements and innovative seascape ecology methods and analyses that allow for the examination dynamic patterning in marine communities. Innovative approaches that incorporate data from genetics, remote sensing, satellite telemetry, and spatial models are encouraged. We especially welcome presentations focused on applications of seascape ecology to conservation and spatial management that advance the science for ocean sustainability.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; Fish and Fisheries; Islands and Reefs; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Population dynamics and ecology; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling; Ecological prediction; Instruments, sensors, and techniques

For More Information: https://doi.org/10.3354/meps13661

ME19 Effects of warming on ecosystems: from traits to food webs

Organizers:
Janet Nye, jnye@unc.edu
Andrew Pershing, apershing@climatecentral.org
Jess Melbourne-Thomas, Jess.Melbourne-Thomas@csiro.au

Warming is now a nearly ubiquitous phenomenon in many ecosystems. The observed and projected effects of temperature change on individual species have been extensively documented, but the effects of warming on species interactions and emergent properties of food webs are poorly understood. To anticipate the unexpected consequences of climate change it is critical that we understand both the direct and indirect effects of warming on ecosystems. We distinguish between the direct effects of warming, processes occurring within an organism (growth, metabolism, activity, movement) from indirect effects, those that happen between organisms. Importantly, we seek to understand if and how both direct and indirect effects of warming can be amplified (or muted) up the food web depending on the traits within the community and the characteristics of the food web. This symposium invites talks that contribute to a mechanistic view of how rising temperatures have impacted and will likely influence marine ecosystem structure and function, from the level of individuals through communities. We encourage talks that consider the effects of warming on community assemblages, trophic interactions, and food web properties through observational, experimental, and modeling studies.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Fish and Fisheries; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity

Keywords: Impacts of global change; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling; Food webs, structure, and dynamics; Population dynamics and ecology

ME20 Zooplankton diversity through space and time

Organizers:
Katja Peijnenburg, k.t.c.a.peijnenburg@uva.nl
Erica Goetze, egoetze@hawaii.edu
Galice Hoarau, galice.g.hoarau@nord.no
Matthew Miller, MattMiller@uvic.ca

Marine zooplankton play vital roles in pelagic food webs, ecosystem functioning, and global biogeochemical cycles and are useful indicators as rapid responders to global change. Yet, the distribution of zooplankton diversity and links to ecological function across space and time remain poorly known throughout the global ocean. We invite contributions investigating marine zooplankton diversity, from individual species to whole communities, and across both ecological and evolutionary timescales. This session will explore new insights into zooplankton, their diversity and roles in the ecosystem, which are being revealed through emergent approaches, such as ‘omics and/or environmental DNA methods, imaging techniques combined with machine learning, and/or trait-based or distribution modelling, while also being inclusive of studies using more conventional methods. This session welcomes contributions from field, laboratory, experimental or theoretical studies and aims to encourage multidisciplinary approaches as well as highlight recent work to better understand the impacts of anthropogenic stressors (e.g. climate change, ocean acidification, aquaculture, deep-sea mining…) on marine zooplankton.

This session is co-organised by SCOR working group MetaZooGene, and is open to all members of the ocean science community.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Zooplankton

For More Information: https://metazoogene.org

Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

OB01 New approaches for the study of the biogeochemistry and microbial ecology of marine oxygen deficient zones

Organizers:
Mark Altabet, maltabet@umassd.edu
Annie Bourbonnais, abourbonnais@seoe.sc.edu
Laura Bristow, lbristow@umassd.edu
Johannes Karstensen, jkarstensen@geomar.de

Oxygen deficient zones (ODZs) uniquely harbor a distinct set of redox-dependent microbial and biogeochemical processes that play important global roles in marine element cycling. Their importance has been further amplified by the prospect of ODZ expansion in response to climate change, with potential large global impacts. ODZs are characterized by steep chemical gradients which, driven by a delicate interplay between biogeochemical and physical processes on a range of spatial and temporal scales, foster complex interactions between aerobic and anaerobic processes that intricately link the cycling of C, N, P, S as well as trace metals. Potent greenhouse (N2O and CH4) or toxic (H2S) gases are also liberated as by-products of ODZ microbial metabolisms. Over the last decade there have been unprecedented advances in methods to elucidate ODZ biogeochemical transformation and mechanisms, the link to ocean physics, and the microbial communities involved. Technological advances in sensor development include detection of nanomolar O2 concentrations allowing for O2 threshold assessments of anaerobic metabolisms. Gas tension devices (GTD) allow in situ measurement of biogenic N2, and optical sensors provide fresh insights to particle distribution and composition. A cross-disciplinary and integrative view of ODZ processes is being provided by autonomous and high resolution (time, space) platforms operated over months to years. Significant improvements in sequencing technology and novel single cell techniques have better characterized microbial communities, key players and their function. Sensitive stable and radioisotope geochemical and biomolecular approaches have provided insight into the complex interplay between microbes, nutrients and organic matter cycling in ODZs. This session seeks to bring together researchers using new observational and analytical approaches to both reveal and understand the complex interplay between chemical, biological and physical processes in ODZs.

Cross listed Tracks: Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling; Anoxic environments; Instruments, sensors, techniques; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling

OB02 Marine fungi and fungi-like organisms

Organizers:
Xuefeng Peng, xpeng@seoe.sc.edu
Brandon Hassett, brandon.hassett1@gmail.com
Gaëtan Burgaud, gaetan.burgaud@univ-brest.fr

Fungi and fungi-like organisms inhabit diverse types of marine habitats from estuaries and coastal zones to the open ocean and the deep biosphere. Within these environments, fungi and fungi-like organisms can interface various processes, such as carbon cycling, nutrient turnover, and parasitism, resulting in top-down control on phytoplankton or organic matter recycling. Marine fungi also harbor a rich potential for natural product discovery, with >300 novel marine fungal natural products described annually, or for bioremediation processes of recalcitrant pollutants through their rich enzymatic potential. From another angle, marine fungi can generate nitrous oxide which is a strong greenhouse gas and ozone-depleting agent. Nevertheless, marine fungi and fungi-like organisms have been largely overlooked compared to their terrestrial counterparts and other members of marine microbial communities. Consequently, little is known about their diversity, ecology, and their contribution to global biogeochemical cycles and their relevance to marine microbial ecosystem models. In this session, we aim to bring together microbial ecologists, cell biologists, bioinformaticians, geochemists, natural product chemists and chemical ecologists, and all other scientists who are interested in advancing our understanding of novel roles played by fungi and fungi-like organisms in the marine environment and/or their application for biotechnology. Interdisciplinary studies using innovative culturing, ‘omics’ approaches, isotope techniques, and novel bioinformatics methodologies are particularly welcome.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Microbiology and microbial ecology; Food webs, structure, and dynamics; Carbon cycling

OB04 Small bugs with a big impact: linking plankton ecology with ecosystem processes

Organizers:
Susanne Menden-Deuer, smenden@uri.edu
Naomi M. Levine, n.levine@usc.edu
Natalie R. Cohen, cohen@uga.edu

Despite their microscopic size, plankton are the primary engines of biogeochemical cycling in the oceans. A mechanistic understanding of large-scale processes, such as the rate of carbon cycling, requires bridging orders of magnitude over spatial and temporal scales - from the biology of individual cells to the ecosystem-scale processes they drive. We need to understand how patterns observed at one scale link to mechanisms or forcing functions at another scale. Recent advances in theoretical and empirical approaches combined with rapid development in ‘omics and computational power have allowed for the quantification of rates and interactions across scales and provided new insights into large-scale ramifications of small-scale events. This interdisciplinary session invites studies that link the biology of individuals (e.g., genetics, physiology, behavior) with ecosystem-level processes (e.g. population dynamics, production, food web structure and function). We particularly invite studies that make linkages across scales: among individual, population, community, or ecosystem levels. Topics might range from individuals’ physiology, biomechanics, or behavior, to the effect of temporal and spatial variability and environmental forcing on the structure and function of populations, communities, or ecosystems. Feedbacks among species-identity and community function are also welcome. Diverse methodological approaches are encouraged and integrative approaches are particularly appreciated.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling

OB05 Drivers and consequences of marine dissolved oxygen depletion: from estuaries to the open ocean

Organizers:
Zhuoyi Zhu, zhu.zhuoyi@sjtu.edu.cn
Lisa Levin, llevin@ucsd.edu
Andreas Oschlies, aoschlies@geomar.de
Grant Pitcher, GPitcher@environment.gov.za

Estuarine and coastal hypoxic sites are emerging across the globe, many of which are attributed to anthropogenic activities but are exacerbated by climate change. The open ocean is also losing oxygen due to the increasing global temperature. To combat oxygen loss, understanding of the drivers is essential, whereas oxygen depletion consequences not only tell how things will change, but also clarify the significance of these changes. The mechanisms behind oxygen loss not only include solubility decrease and stratification increase, but also changes in nutrient input, circulation, mixing and respiration. Proxies established in sedimentary or fossil studies shed light on past marine oxygen depletion histories, and look to the future to yield understanding of how marine oxygen depletion will develop and provide feedback, dependent on both the changing natural and anthropogenic stressors. Our deeper understanding or prediction of marine dissolved oxygen depletion, in terms of both its drivers and consequences, its past and future, its steady state and dynamic features, is the base of scientific policy and solutions. In turn policies and solutions test our understanding of oxygen depletion. This session welcomes all oxygen depletion studies from varied disciplines that emphasize physical, chemical, biological, ecological, policy or solution aspects, covering both steady-state (oxygen deficiency) and dynamic process (deoxygenation) investigations.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade

Keywords: Impacts of global change; Hypoxic environments; Science policy

OB06 Population-resolved marine microbial activity

Organizers:
Alyse Larkin, larkinsa@uci.edu
Jake Weissman, jakeweis@usc.edu
Jed Fuhrman, fuhrman@usc.edu

In ocean ecosystems, significant progress has been made in characterizing patterns of microbial biodiversity across both spatial and temporal gradients, but researchers have only recently begun developing and applying the tools necessary to link this biodiversity with larger biogeochemical cycles. To do so requires us to assess the ecological drivers of microbial activity. Several promising approaches that resolve the activities of specific microbes at the population-scale have been developed and employed in situ to better understand the impact of the ocean microbiome on marine ecosystems, including measurements based on genomic or transcriptomic features (codon usage bias, peak to trough ratios, RNA content), fluorescence (high resolution flow cytometry, MAR-CARD-FISH, nanoSIMS), and isotope-uptake (SIP, BONCAT). These novel techniques and others allow us to open the “black box” of microbial community composition in order to assess fundamental questions regarding the ecological regulation, distribution, and biogeochemical effects of microbial activity in the marine environment. We welcome abstracts exploring all aspects of broadly defined microbial activity (growth rates, primary production, respiration, organic matter decomposition, nutrient uptake and cycling, etc.) when they are resolved to particular subsets of the community. Methodological, theoretical, and empirical work will be considered. Abstracts that explore the abiotic and biotic drivers, the spatiotemporal distribution, and/or the current and future impact of taxa- or population-level microbial activity on marine ecosystem function are particularly encouraged.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity

Keywords: Microbiology and microbial ecology; Population dynamics and ecology

OB07 Research Opportunities from a Global Biogeochemical Argo Fleet

Organizers:
Andrea Fassbender, andrea.j.fassbender@noaa.gov
Nathan Briggs, nathan.briggs@noc.ac.uk
Katja Fennel, katja.fennel@dal.ca
Henry Bittig, henry.bittig@io-warnemuende.de
Paolo Lazzari, plazzari@inogs.it

With international commitments in place to build over half of the proposed 1,000 float biogeochemical (BGC) Argo array over the next 5 years, the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development is on track to significantly accelerate autonomous ocean BGC data acquisition. Like Argo, BGC Argo will further democratize science through global, near real-time public dissemination of high-quality ocean biogeochemistry data. An expansion of the BGC float user base is needed to fully capitalize on the planned observing system enhancements. This session aims to highlight the extensive range of ocean research topics that BGC Argo connects to, including marine deoxygenation; ocean acidification; air-sea fluxes of oxygen and carbon dioxide; the biological pump; particle dynamics; and biogeochemical (oxygen, nitrogen, carbon) cycles. A key goal of the session is to emphasize how a global BGC float array can deliver novel science that, when scaled regionally or globally, could support fisheries management, ecosystem modeling, carbon budget verification, remote sensing applications, climate modeling, and operational forecasting. Contributions related to how BGC Argo connects with hydrography (e.g., GO-SHIP and GLODAPv2), ocean data products (e.g., SOCAT), remote sensing, models, and traditional approaches for measuring ocean biogeochemistry are also welcome. We encourage submitters to place their results in the context of the anticipated global BGC float array to clarify how various applications fit into the global observing system by enhancing or leveraging different parts of it.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Carbon cycling; Diurnal, seasonal, and annual cycles; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling

OB08 Quantifying marine microbial processes

Organizers:
Keisuke Inomura, ag105020@gmail.com
Subhendu Chakraborty, subhendu.chakraborty@leibniz-zmt.de
Takako Masuda, takako@alga.cz
Terence Hwa, thwa@ucsd.edu

Significant advancement has been made in qualitative studies of marine microbiology, following the advancement of omic studies. These studies focus on what exists in the ocean and what they are doing. But, how much quantitative information do we have? For example, how fast do different microbial processes occur, such as nutrient uptake, cellular growth, photosynthesis, nitrogen fixation, respiration, etc.? Also, how much do different molecules accumulate within cells under different conditions, such as proteins, carbohydrates, osmolytes, lipids, storage compounds, etc.? Furthermore, what controls the abundance of molecules and the rate of each process? Answers to these questions are essential in assessing the magnitude of the impact of microbial processes on the environment, biogeochemical cycles, and climate. Yet, many such questions remain unsolved. Here we invite contributions to quantifying marine microbial processes as well as quantifying their impacts on the marine environment. Examples include, but are not limited to, in situ observations, culture studies, quantitative theories, and computational models. This session strives to bring together these different studies and facilitate communications across scientists specialized in different methods (e.g., computational vs. experimental) toward a better quantitative understanding of marine microbial processes.

Cross listed Tracks: Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; High Latitude Environments; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling

Keywords: Microbiology and microbial ecology; General or miscellaneous; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling

For More Information: https://www.inomura.com/collaborations

OB09 Quantifying the Ocean Carbon Sink

Organizers:
Galen McKinley, mckinley@ldeo.columbia.edu
Peter Landschützer, peter.landschuetzer@mpimet.mpg.de
Jens Müller, jensdaniel.mueller@usys.ethz.ch
Adrienne Sutton, adrienne.sutton@noaa.gov

The ocean significantly modulates climate change by acting as a major sink for anthropogenic carbon. Closure of the global carbon budget depends on knowledge of the decadal-mean ocean carbon sink, and further reduction of uncertainty in ocean sink estimates is needed to support climate change mitigation policy. Great progress is being made in the capacity to accurately diagnose the evolving ocean carbon budget and its variability using models, observations, machine learning, and theory. Autonomous platforms offer great promise for expanded observational capacity. Uncertainties in all approaches are receiving significant attention. Community synthesis efforts are underway seeking to intercompare recent estimates from independent approaches on regional and global scales. In addition, approaches for purposeful carbon dioxide removal (CDR) in the ocean are being proposed and evaluated.

In this session, we welcome contributions that quantify the rates and processes of fluxes and storage of carbon, the modification of the carbon cycle due to physical, chemical and biological processes, and studies of CDR approaches to increase ocean carbon uptake. Timescales from seasonal to millennial are of interest. Contributions from current synthesis projects such as RECCAP2 (REgional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes Phase 2) and the OCB Carbon Gaps Working Group, in addition to studies that address open and coastal ocean regions; the surface or the interior; and that apply observations, models, and theory, are welcome.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change

Keywords: Oceans; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling

OB11 Beyond bulk measurements: applying micro- and nanotechnologies to understand marine microbial interactions and biogeochemical cycling

Organizers:
Sheri Floge, floges@wfu.edu
Flora Vincent, flora.vincent@weizmann.ac.il

Marine microbes drive global scale cycles of macro- and micronutrients and climate-active gases through myriad small-scale interactions with biotic and abiotic factors. These individual interactions occurring at micron scales ultimately control ecosystem structure and function. To date, our understanding of aquatic ecosystems has been limited by our ability to quantify microbial interactions at relevant spatial and temporal scales, but recent advances in micro- and nanotechnologies offer new opportunities for discovery. In this session, we welcome scientists and engineers using or developing tools to move beyond population-based measurements and instead study marine microbes at the single cell level. This session is intended to be interdisciplinary and we invite studies focused on quantifying small-scale biological, biochemical, biogeochemical, or biophysical microbial interactions in the context of global scale biogeochemical cycling.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Microbiology and microbial ecology

OB12 Coupling the silica cycle to marine macronutrient and trace metal biogeochemical cycles

Organizers:
Jeffrey Krause, jkrause@disl.edu
Lucie Cassarino, Lucie.Cassarino@univ-brest.fr
SuMei Liu, sumeiliu@ouc.edu.cn
Shaily Rahman, Shaily.Rahman@usm.edu

There has been exceptional advancement in our understanding of the processes governing the fluxes within the global marine silica (Si) cycle. These have been facilitated through advancements ranging from biological (e.g., role of sponges, Rhizaria, cyanobacteria) to geochemical (e.g., groundwater inputs, marine reverse weathering, low-temperature weathering) studies. Such new understanding has prompted two significant revisions to the marine Si budget in the last decade. Furthermore, these advances have also led to revisions in how the silica cycle is understood through geological time by both biotic and abiotic processes. Because the marine Si cycle is inherently coupled to many biogeochemical cycles (C, N, P, Fe, Ge, Li, Nd, etc.) due to biochemical and geochemical processes, interdisciplinary studies can provide important insights toward refining the marine Si budget and understanding the link with these other elements. This session will focus on the biogeochemical processes in the water column, sediments, and groundwater pertaining to the marine Si cycle, ranging from the land-sea interface to the open ocean over recent and geological time scales. We call for submissions highlighting insights into the marine Si cycle by using new methodological approaches, numerical models, leveraging the coupling of Si to other elemental systems (e.g. C, N, P, Fe, Ge, Li, Nd), and to increase understanding of anthropogenic effects.

Cross listed Tracks: Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Continental shelf and slope processes; Phytoplankton; Zooplankton; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling

OB13 Marine snow and the biological, chemical, and physical processes that control its fate

Organizers:
Jennifer Prairie, jcprairie@sandiego.edu
Klas Möller, klas.moeller@hereon.de
Matthew Rau, mjr79@psu.edu
Kai Ziervogel, kai.ziervogel@unh.edu

Marine aggregates of biogenic origin, known as marine snow, play an important role in marine elemental cycles and the ocean's biological pump. These aggregates are the major vector for the transfer of carbon from the upper ocean to deeper layers and can serve as both a food source for zooplankton and hotspots of microbial activity. Thus knowledge of the distribution, characteristics, and dynamics of marine snow in the ocean is fundamental to understanding the marine ecosystem, from food web dynamics to global biogeochemical cycles. The fate of marine snow falling through the water column is influenced by many biological, chemical, and physical factors, including production of phytoplankton in surface waters, consumption and decomposition rates of the organic matter en route to the seafloor, and changes to particle settling and disaggregation due to stratification and turbulence. Although our mechanistic understanding of the processes controlling the biological carbon pump is limited by a lack of observational data at appropriate scales, recent advances in field observations and laboratory methodologies have provided a deeper understanding on the morphology and evolution of marine snow in situ, as well as aggregate-associated microbiomes and their role in carbon and nutrient cycles in the ocean. Yet much remains to be learned, including the role of marine snow in the fate of pollutants (e.g., spilled oil, microplastics, toxins), particularly as we face an ocean responding to global change. We welcome submissions of observational, computational, or experimental studies that explore biological, chemical, or physical processes related to marine snow on spatial scales from single aggregates to ocean basins. We particularly welcome studies that contribute to model parameterization, extrapolating marine snow processes to environmental scales, and facilitating the prediction of future scenarios of marine snow dynamics within the framework of the biological pump.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Modeling; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Turbulence, diffusion, and mixing processes; Carbon cycling; Zooplankton; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling

OB14 The evolving ocean carbon sink: what is the contribution of biological processes?

Organizers:
Wolfgang Koeve, wkoeve@geomar.de
Angela Landolfi, angela.landolfi@cnr.it
Ivy Frenger, ifrenger@geomar.de

The ocean is the prominent sink of CO2 stemming from the human perturbation of fossil fuel burning and land use change. The dominant marine process of anthropogenic CO2 (Cant )-uptake is by physical-chemical processes, often referred to as the solubility pump. However, climate change, ocean acidification, and ocean deoxygenation, all direct or indirect consequences of the atmospheric pCO2 increase also affect marine biogeochemistry and biological processes in a multitude of ways. Quantifying the role of these changes has been difficult in the presence of the massive invasion of Cant. Intentional manipulations of marine ecosystems with the objective to artificially increase the future marine CO2 sink (i.e. geoengineering) may further modify the natural marine carbon cycle, including its biological components, with poorly known side effects.

Here we invite contributions from experimental, observing or modelling studies that explore the role of biology and the biological carbon pumps in the evolving ocean carbon sink, from decadal to centennial and longer time scales. Topics at stake of this session are e.g. changes in biological production, changes in community composition (or functional type) biogeography, export production, flux attenuation or interior oceanic storage of organic matter degradation products driven by changes in circulation, the reorganization of nutrient pathways, large scale biogeochemical feedbacks associated with global change, or associated to geoengineering proposals. We look forward to studies that offer qualitative and quantitative answers regarding the importance of these processes on the evolving marine carbon sink.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Modeling; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling

OB15 The Wizard of O2

Organizers:
Isabel Seguro, seguroisabel@yahoo.com
Giorgio Dall'Olmo, gdal@pml.ac.uk
Carol Robinson, Carol.Robinson@uea.ac.uk
Sara Ferrón, sferron@hawaii.edu

“Follow the yellow brick road” …to our session: The amount of biological dissolved oxygen in the ocean is controlled by plankton photosynthesis and respiration. In the surface oxic ocean, O2 and CO2 can be exchanged with the atmosphere regulating the global atmospheric budget of these gases and by extension, the Earth’s climate. In deeper waters, oxygen minimum zones (OMZ) are spatially expanding and intensifying, with models projecting continued O2 loss into the future. Global warming may change planktonic community composition and in turn change the balance of O2 produced and consumed. In order to determine future changes in dissolved oxygen and how shifts in the plankton community may impact O2 cycling, we need to validate methods that can measure oxygen concentration, plankton production, and respiration in an accurate and reliable way. This session will bring together all topics focused on past, present and future cycling of marine O2, plankton oxygen production, microbial respiration, OMZs, deoxygenation, oxygen-monitoring, oxygen air-sea gas exchange, and techniques such as oxygen sensors, stable oxygen isotopes, O2/Ar, in vivo INT, autonomous floats, and any other novel technique in the field.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Technologies and Observatories

Keywords: Instruments, sensors, techniques; Photosynthesis; Microbiology and microbial ecology; Stable isotopes

OB16 Compound-Specific Isotopes in Marine Ecology and Biogeochemistry: Analysis and Applications.

Organizers:
Owen Sherwood, owen.sherwood@dal.ca
Anela Choy, anela@ucsd.edu
Hilary Close, hclose@rsmas.miami.edu
Kelton McMahon, kelton_mcmahon@uri.edu

The structure, function, and productivity of marine ecosystems are tightly coupled to the biogeochemical cycling of carbon and nitrogen. For decades, natural-abundance isotope analyses of carbon and nitrogen have served as indispensable tools for investigating interconnections from the level of nutrients and particulates to individual organisms and foodwebs. Increasingly, compound-specific isotope analyses of individual organic molecules (e.g., amino acids, fatty acids, etc.) represent the leading edge in isotope ecology and biogeochemistry. The information content of isotope ratios in organic molecules is orders of magnitude higher than that of bulk organic materials, and we are only beginning to understand the interpretive power of this information. The goal of this session is to explore new approaches, limitations, and emerging questions in the field by bringing together users of different types of organic compound-specific isotope data. We invite submissions that highlight applications in isotope ecology and biogeochemistry in marine (and aquatic) systems (e.g., biomarkers, consumer diet and trophic dynamics, resource partitioning, microbial metabolisms, organic matter degradation, and paleo-studies). Additionally, we encourage submissions that address mechanisms of isotope fractionation at the molecular level as well as analytical challenges and approaches. We especially encourage hearing from diverse voices in the field that bring together rich and varied perspectives, experiences, backgrounds, and career stages.

Cross listed Tracks: Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling; Food webs, structure, and dynamics; Stable isotopes; Geochemical tracers

OB18 Illuminating the ecological and biogeochemical dynamics of the Twilight Zone

Organizers:
Fraser Kennedy, f.c.kennedy@utas.edu.au
Chelsey Baker, chelsey.baker@noc.ac.uk
Svenja Halfter, svenja.halfter@utas.edu.au

The ocean’s Twilight Zone, or mesopelagic layer, is the dimly lit stratum between the sunlit surface ocean and 1000m water depth, and is the focus of the new international Joint Exploration of the Twilight Zone Ocean Network (JETZON). This region is a vast ecosystem that hosts a huge biomass of plankton and nekton supported by organic matter exported from the surface ocean. A range of multifaceted ecological and biogeochemical mechanisms occur within the mesopelagic layer that influences the standing stock of biomass, the partitioning of sinking detritus, the recycling of nutrients and the rate of microbial remineralization. Organic matter is transformed by several processes within the mesopelagic zone, such as zooplankton fragmentation and microbial remineralisation, which can alter particle characteristics, sinking speed and lability. The transfer of organic matter into the mesopelagic zone and beyond can also be mediated by physical processes, such as eddy subduction and the mixed layer pump, and ecological processes, such as the lipid and migrant pumps. Small changes in the remineralization depth of organic particles in this zone can have long-term and wide-reaching impacts on global biogeochemical cycles and climate. Progress in quantifying the magnitude and variability of such mechanisms and parameterising the key dynamic processes in models has been hindered by technical constraints and knowledge gaps. It is a crucial time for twilight zone research as the ecosystem currently hosts the largest unexploited stocks of fish and is vulnerable to future perturbations from human activities and the cumulative impact of climate change. This session will provide a platform to share new insights across projects as knowledge exchange between large international projects, smaller projects and early career researchers is key to advancing our understanding of Twilight Zone ecological and inter-connected biogeochemical processes.

Cross listed Tracks: Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; Fish and Fisheries; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: ; Carbon cycling; Microbiology and microbial ecologyEcosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling

OB19 Moving beyond Trichodesmium: assessing the importance of non-cyanobacterial diazotrophs and other previously overlooked nitrogen-fixers in marine ecosystems

Organizers:
Kendra Turk-Kubo, kturk@ucsc.edu
Mary Rose (Rosie) Gradoville, mgradovi@ucsc.edu
Mar Benavides, mar.benavides@ird.fr
Pia Moisander, pmoisander@umassd.edu
Lasse Riemann, lriemann@bio.ku.dk
Francisco Miguel Cornejo Castillo, fmcornejo@icm.csic.es

Through the 20th century, nitrogen fixation in the oceans was thought to be dominated by large, filamentous cyanobacteria, including the colony-forming Trichodesmium and heterocyst-forming symbionts of diatoms. Recent sequencing-based approaches have radically shifted this paradigm, highlighting the importance of other nitrogen-fixers (called diazotrophs) in diverse marine environments, including the water column and also the benthos (e.g. sediments and nitrogen-fixing symbionts of corals). Furthermore, it has been suggested that non-cyanobacterial diazotrophs (NCDs) may be numerically more important than their cyanobacterial counterparts, even in open ocean environments. NCDs are a phylogenetically diverse group of microbes that fundamentally differ from cyanobacteria in that they are putative heterotrophs and thus likely require exogenous fixed carbon. Despite the recurrent recovery of NCD genes in PCR-based and metagenomic ocean surveys, little is known about the physiological diversity and ecology of these organisms and whether they actively contribute to nitrogen fixation in marine systems. Recent reports of nitrogen fixation in unexpected environments, including coastal upwelling systems, high latitude oceans, mesopelagic waters, and symbiotic systems, underscore the need to understand the taxa responsible for marine nitrogen fixation in order to better constrain this keystone process.

This session strives to shed light on previously overlooked nitrogen-fixers, in effort to better understand the important players driving global marine nitrogen fixation rates. We encourage submissions that apply novel technical approaches to investigating the distribution and activity of these rare biosphere microbes, including stable isotope probing, gene-based surveys, ‘omics tools, visualization-based techniques, and cultivation or model-based approaches.

Cross listed Tracks: Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Microbiology and microbial ecology

OB20 Towards BioGeoSCAPES: Linking cellular metabolism with ocean biogeochemistry

Organizers:
Adrian Marchetti, amarchetti@unc.edu
Yoshiko Kondo, yoshikondo@nagasaki-u.ac.jp
Naomi Levine, n.levine@usc.edu
Dalin Shi, dshi@xmu.edu.cn

BioGeoSCAPES is an international program initiative aimed at integrating knowledge on organism identity and physiology within frameworks of community ecology and global ocean biogeochemistry. It is envisioned that an improved, predictive, and quantitative understanding of ocean metabolism on a changing planet can be achieved by combining detailed information on plankton (i.e., virio-, bacterio-, phyto- and zoo-) cell status, biochemical processes, and species interactions with intercalibrated measurements of nutrient fluxes, concentrations, and speciation (e.g., macronutrients, including inorganic and organic carbon, micronutrients and vitamins). We invite contributions describing research that can serve as inspiration for this nascent program. Appropriate abstracts could include: studies that integrate cellular metabolism through physiological and ‘omics approaches (e.g., genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, metabolomic, metallomic, lipidomic, etc.) with biogeochemical measurements, including fluxes; or studies that scale from the cellular to the ecosystem level through integrated field measurements or mechanistic models of interactions. With the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacting field research opportunities, we are particularly interested in laboratory and modelling studies that provide new insights into BioGeoSCAPES-related topics across different scales of time and space.

Cross listed Tracks: Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Modeling

Keywords: Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modelingMicrobiology and microbial ecology; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modelingNutrients and nutrient cycling

For More Information: https://www.biogeoscapes.org

OB23 Impact of Large River Systems on the Ocean

Organizers:
Natalie Loick-Wilde, natalie.loick-wilde@io-warnemuende.de
Maren Voss, maren.voss@io-warnemuende.de
Volker Mohrholz, volker.mohrholz@io-warnemuende.de
Joseph P. Montoya, montoya@gatech.edu
Ajit Subramaniam, ajit@ldeo.columbia.edu

Globally, large river systems are important sources of nutrients to the ocean and shape vast regions beyond their respective river mouths. They supply dissolved and particulate organic matter, as well as inorganic phosphate, nitrate and silicate to the plankton communities and food webs in their deltas and river plumes.
One such example is the Amazon River Plume whose freshwater outflow can cover an area greater than 1 million km2 for a few months of the year. This river impacts phytoplankton composition, nutrient cycling, and food webs resulting in unique habitats with distinct functional diversity and processes.

We propose a session to initiate discussion on the topic of the influence of major river plumes on the coastal and open ocean and how potential changes in the river catchments may change loads and thus coastal processes and functional diversity in aquatic food webs. Many river systems on land are currently undergoing massive changes with far reaching and usually not well understood impacts on coastal seas.

To this session we invite abstracts of research in various large river systems covering all aspects from physical processes of river plume mixing or tidal influences to biogeochemical studies of microbial rate measurements as well as food web studies up to the trophic levels of micro- and mesozooplankton.

Cross listed Tracks: Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Fine structure and microstructureNearshore processes; Food webs, structure, and dynamics

OB25 Convergent approaches to elucidating viral impacts on the oceanic carbon cycle

Organizers:
Kay Bidle, bidle@marine.rutgers.edu
Ben Van Mooy, bvanmooy@whoi.edu
Elizabeth Harvey, elizabeth.harvey@unh.edu
Manu Prakash, manup@stanford.edu
Dan Whitt, daniel.b.whitt@nasa.gov

Oceanic ‘pandemics’ happen on weekly time scales, causing phytoplankton populations to wax and wane over predictable cycles. These widespread infections exert a fundamental control on Earth’s biogeochemical cycles, dictating the fate of carbon and whether it is retained and recycled in the surface ocean (by lysing cells) or exported to the mesopelagic and sequestered at depth (by influencing the formation of sinking particles). Collectively, viruses influence the capability of the oceans to absorb CO2 in the face of climate change. Yet the impact of viruses on the spatial and temporal variability in productivity and export efficiency remain unexplained. Adequate predictions of these impacts require holistic approaches that incorporate novel conceptual thinking and coordinated analytical measurements from distinct fields that are often studied in isolation. In the spirit of ‘pilina’, we welcome topics that converge scientific understanding, conceptual thinking and analytical approaches in biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, mathematics, and computational modeling at the intersection of key paradigms that describe how ecosystem interactions regulate the flow of carbon in the ocean, such as the virus shunt, biological pump, and ballast hypothesis. This includes if and how phytoplankton-pathogen-particle-predator linkages, which were traditionally thought to be independent and competing, may be coupled and may coalesce in certain physical regimes to facilitate export fluxes and help to explain the high variability of export efficiency. Interdisciplinary lab- and field-based studies that use cutting-edge engineering and analytical approaches to diagnose infection and quantify particle aggregation/disaggregation, mineral dissolution, sinking dynamics, grazing rates, marine snow/fecal pellet production and export across different physical regimes are particularly encouraged.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Instruments, sensors, techniques; Turbulence, diffusion, and mixing processes; Carbon cycling; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling

OB27 Expanding Frontiers In Productivity and Flux from Ocean Optics

Organizers:
Norman Nelson, norm@eri.ucsb.edu
Jason Graff, jason.graff@oregonstate.edu
Collin Roesler, croesler@bowdoin.edu
Sasha Kramer, sasha.kramer@lifesci.ucsb.edu
Zachary Erickson, zachary.k.erickson@nasa.gov

Modern optical and imaging tools expand our ability to observe particle fields and plankton communities at resolutions previously unattainable through discrete sampling alone. This increased capacity for quantifying and characterizing a wide range of particle types and sizes provided by these technologies can inform, for example, models of production, particle aggregation and disaggregation, community structure, and carbon flux to the deep ocean. Deployment of these technologies has been at the forefront of many recent ocean-going interdisciplinary field campaigns (NAAMES, COMICS, EXPORTS) with the intent to link particles with their associated optical parameters and ultimately to inform and improve our assessments of biological rates and ecosystem functions. This session seeks to explore the abilities of optical and imaging technologies (e.g. multi- and hyper-spectral backscatter, cytometric and in-situ imaging) from shipboard, autonomous (e.g Bio-Argo), or remote sensing platforms (e.g. the upcoming PACE mission) for observing and describing plankton and particles with a focus on their application to carbon cycle science.

Cross listed Tracks: Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Technologies and Observatories

Keywords: Ocean optics; Physical and biogeochemical interactions; Carbon cycling; Carbon cycling

OB28 Marine photochemistry and photobiology, local and global impacts in a changing ocean

Organizers:
David Kieber, djkieber@esf.edu
Leanne Powers, lpowers@umces.edu
William Miller, bmiller@uga.edu
Joanna Kinsey, Joanna.Kinsey@quinnipiac.edu

Sunlight fuels a myriad of photochemical and photobiological transformations with broad reaching consequences on ocean systems. These transformations affect the sea-surface microlayer and gas exchange, upper ocean ecology, particulate, colloidal and dissolved organic matter, primary marine aerosol, ocean optics, remote sensing, trace element cycles, xenobiotics (e.g., plastics), and the atmosphere through marine-derived volatile gases produced in sunlit surface waters. Recent advances have led to new discoveries and a better understanding of marine photochemical and photobiological processes that range from molecular to global scales; and yet the potential impact of climate change on mechanisms, linkages, and feedbacks involving these processes are largely unexplored. We welcome submissions in all areas of marine photochemistry and photobiology, especially those exploring the potential role of climate change on these processes and their impacts on upper ocean biogeochemistry.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; High Latitude Environments; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Technologies and Observatories

Keywords: Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling; Microbiology and microbial ecology

Climate and Ocean Change

OC03 Towards understanding coastal sea-level variability and change

Organizers:
Soenke Dangendorf, soenke.dangendorf@uni-siegen.de
Marta Marcos, marta.marcos@uib.es
Alejandra Rodriguez Enriquez, a.enriquez@ucf.edu
Christopher Piecuch, cpiecuch@whoi.edu

Coastal sea-level rise is one of the most severe consequences of anthropogenic climate change and significantly escalates the already far-reaching environmental, societal, and economic consequences of tidal flooding or hazardous events such as storms. This has also been recognized by the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), which lists sea-level rise as one of the Grand Challenges of our time. This session seeks contributions that examine both observations and models of sea-level variability and change, their drivers and impacts along the coast. We particularly welcome contributions that assess sea-level changes and drivers across different temporal (from minutes to millennia; mean and extreme sea-levels) and spatial (local to global) scales, including links among processes with different scales affecting coastal sea level. This includes (but is not limited to) changes in mean sea level, astronomical tides, storm surges and waves under current and future conditions.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Sea level change; Climate variability; Sea level: variations and mean

For More Information: https://www.wcrp-climate.org/gc-sea-level

OC04 Mesoscale eddies and their roles in the climate system: characteristics, dynamics, mechanisms, and interactions with the mean flow and the overlying atmosphere

Organizers:
Mengrong Ding, dingmr@lasg.iap.ac.cn
Aixue Hu, ahu@ucar.edu.cn
Pengfei Lin, linpf@mail.iap.ac.cn

The elevated anthropogenic forcing has modulated the earth’s energy balance and induced significant changes in the ocean. Mesoscale eddies (MEs), the ubiquitous features in the global ocean, play an essential role in the oceanic energy cascade and tracer transport. It is crucial to determine how MEs in the global ocean will respond to global warming. However, the lack of long-term high-resolution and three-dimensional observations impedes our ability to understand the dynamical impacts of global warming on MEs. With increased computational power, simulations from eddy-resolving fully coupled models or standalone ocean models make more detailed studies about MEs’ dynamics from regional to global scales under a changing climate possible. In this session, we welcome abstracts studying MEs using observations and/or eddy-resolving models, including but not limited to MEs characteristics, dynamics, mechanisms, and interactions of MEs with oceanic mean flow, overlying atmosphere, and anthropogenic forcing on regional to global scales.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Eddies and mesoscale processes

OC05 Sea level in a warming world: global changes and large-scale processes

Organizers:
Tim Hermans, tim.hermans@nioz.nl
Thomas Frederikse, thomas.frederikse@jpl.nasa.gov
Fabio Boeira Dias, fabio.boeiradias@helsinki.fi
Maria Hakuba, maria.z.hakuba@jpl.nasa.gov

Significant uncertainties remain in how changes in ocean circulation, heat uptake and ocean mass affect past, present, and future sea-level changes. In this session, we invite observational and model studies into the sea-level budget, ocean dynamics, heat uptake and redistribution and their relation to past, present and future global and regional sea-level change. Additionally, we welcome studies on the contribution of land-ice mass and terrestrial hydrology changes and the interaction between ice sheets and ocean circulation to sea-level change. We are also interested in analyses and projections of sea-level change based on simulations of global climate and ocean models, such as from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6 (CMIP6), and in studies investigating the importance of ocean model resolution for simulating sea-level change.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Sea level change; Climate dynamics; Cryospheric change; Earth system modeling

OC06 Indian Ocean intraseasonal-to-interdecadal variability and its role in regional and global climate

Organizers:
Shineng Hu, shineng.hu@duke.edu
Weiqing Han, whan@colorado.edu
Lei Zhang, Lei.Zhang-4@Colorado.EDU

Unlike the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, the Indian Ocean does not have a permanent equatorial cold tongue due to the prevailing surface equatorial westerlies, and climate conditions in the North Indian Ocean are characterized by strong seasonal variations driven by monsoon winds. On intraseasonal timescales, Indian Ocean air-sea interaction affects the initiation and propagation of atmospheric intraseasonal oscillations (ISOs), impacting weather and climate in various regions of the globe. On interannual-to-interdecadal timescales, Indian Ocean variability interacts with other ocean basins through both atmospheric and oceanic pathways, leading to significant impacts on regional and global climate. Since the 1950s, the Indian Ocean has been persistently warming by over 1°C, which is shown to influence climate in other ocean basins and over the continents.

This session invites studies aiming to understand the oceanic and atmospheric variability within the Indian Ocean or to explore the role of Indian Ocean variability in regional and global climate on intraseasonal-to-interdecadal timescales, including the multi-decadal trend. We particularly seek contributions that use synthetical observational analysis, advanced modeling techniques, and/or novel theoretical framework to advance our understanding of Indian Ocean multi-scale variability and its role in climate.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change

Keywords: Climate variability; Climate dynamics; Decadal ocean variability; Air/sea interactions

OC07 Eastern Boundary Upwelling Systems: present and future changes and their impacts on marine ecosystems

Organizers:
Mercedes Pozo Buil, mpozobui@ucsc.edu
Nathalí Cordero-Quiros, ncorder1@ucsc.edu
Carmen G. Castro, cgcastro@iim.csic.es
Steven Bograd, steven.bograd@noaa.gov
Carina Fish, crfish@ucdavis.edu

Eastern Boundary Upwelling Systems (EBUS) are some of the most productive and diverse ecosystems supporting some of the world’s major fisheries and other socioeconomically valuable services. Their extraordinary biological productivity is intimately linked to complex dynamical processes that experience a wide range of spatio-temporal variability due to the strong coupling between the ocean and atmosphere. Thus, understanding how climate change will affect the characteristics and the dynamical processes of the EBUS ecosystems is key for resource management. In this session we invite interdisciplinary presentations investigating changes in physical, biological, and chemical characteristics of EBUS and their impacts on marine ecosystems. In particular, studies that combine observational and modeling efforts and that investigate future changes on various components of the ecosystems (from physics to socio-economics) with focus on climate change impacts are of interest.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Fish and Fisheries; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Regional climate change; Upwelling and convergences; Physical and biogeochemical interactions; Climate and interannual variability

OC08 Multiple Stressors: from ocean physics to ecosystem function

Organizers:
Hayley Dosser, hdosser@eoas.ubc.ca
Christopher Cornwall, christopher.cornwall@vuw.ac.nz
Amber Holdsworth, Amber.Holdsworth@dfo-mpo.gc.ca
Nina Yang, ninayang@usc.edu

Anthropogenic climate change is altering conditions across the global ocean, driving more frequent and extreme ocean states including anomalously high temperature, deoxygenation, and acidification. Multiple ecosystem stressors occurring concurrently or consecutively can result in consequences for marine biota that greatly exceed the effects of a single stressor in isolation. This session will pursue two distinct, but complementary, lines of inquiry:

1. Connecting ocean physics with ocean warming, acidification and deoxygenation : Extreme events, including the synchronous occurrence of multiple stressors, can be driven by changes in the underlying ocean physics, including, but not limited to, changes in stratification, mixing, circulation patterns, upwelling, and air-ice-ocean interactions. This part of the session aims to highlight new research focused on understanding the complex interactions between changes in one or more stressor and the underlying physical processes that drive or influence these changes.
2. Towards a mechanistic understanding of how multiple stressors influence marine life: The effect of multiple stressors is usually context dependent, being altered by the duration of cumulative stress, the population of the community, and the life-stage of the organism. We currently have a poor understanding of how cumulative stress from multiple stressors could manifest. This part of the session focuses on developing a mechanistic understanding of the underpinning controls through research that more accurately represents the number of stressors that organisms are currently encountering.

In this session we encourage experimental, observational, and modelling investigations, including those that consider the current state of the ocean and those that consider future projections. Our focus includes both open ocean and coastal waters, as well as the connections between them.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Oceans; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling; Physical and biogeochemical interactions; Climate and interannual variability

OC09 Seasonal-to-decadal forecasting of the marine environment

Organizers:
Jonathan Tinker, jonathan.tinker@metoffice.gov.uk
Alistair Hobday, Alistair.Hobday@csiro.au
Stephanie Brodie, stephanie.brodie@noaa.gov
Claire Spillman, claire.spillman@bom.gov.au
Leon Hermanson, leon.hermanson@metoffice.gov.uk

There are a wide range of communities, stakeholder, fisheries, and industries that rely on the marine environment, and are subject to its variability. Knowledge of how the marine environment may vary over the coming weeks, months, and years can be hugely beneficial compared to relying on historical patterns or climatological averages. Seasonal-to-decadal forecasts can be based on statistical relationships within the marine system (lags, persistence, life-history), or can be underpinned by dynamic models. The development of skilful seasonal forecasting systems has seen a wide range of applications, with particular strengths and weaknesses.
We invite contributions that focus on predictability within, and forecasts of the marine environment and the biological system, with timescales of weeks to years. We welcome studies on the underpinning science, uncertainty, predictability and skill assessment, prototype forecasts, operational forecasts and specific user applied forecasts. Contributions on physical predictability and forecasts that focus on mean temperature/salinity anomalies; stratification; circulation; marine heatwaves/cold snaps; deoxygenation; sea level; storm surges; waves; biogeochemistry; harmful algal blooms; and upwelling events are particularly welcome, as are biological forecasts that focus on multi-species; single species; distribution; abundance; recruitment; and phenology.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Fish and Fisheries; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Climate variability; Climate and interannual variability; Ocean predictability and prediction; Higher trophic levels

OC10 From the Antarctic margin to the open ocean: discerning variability and change in the Southern Ocean

Organizers:
Rebecca Beadling, rebecca.beadling@noaa.gov
Graeme MacGilchrist, graemem@princeton.edu
Natalie Freeman, Natalie.Freeman@colorado.edu
Veronica Tamsitt, veronica.tamsitt@gmail.com

The Southern Ocean (SO) is a fundamental component of the global climate system due to its unique geometry and circulation, playing a key role in the connectivity between ocean basins, oceanic uptake and storage of anthropogenic heat and carbon, and delivery of heat to the base of Antarctic ice shelves. Given its significance, shifts in the physical state of the SO have global consequences. However, owing to its inaccessibility, the SO has been historically undersampled, and its complex dynamics, including the importance of small-scale nonlinear motions and the intricate coupling between ocean, atmosphere, and cryosphere, presents a formidable challenge for numerical simulation. Consequently, the key physical processes that govern variability and anthropogenically-forced change in the SO have remained poorly understood and the region’s evolution under future warming remains a crucial uncertainty in climate projections. Recent advancements in observations of the ocean interior and at the air-sea interface, in conjunction with advances in numerical modeling allow for a more mechanistic understanding of the drivers of variability and change in the SO. Reducing uncertainty in future climate projections relies on a robust understanding of how circulation, water mass properties, and feedbacks in the SO are evolving now and will evolve into the future.

This session invites submissions that utilize observational and/or modeling frameworks to advance our understanding of the underlying dynamics of the SO, with a particular focus on discerning variability and change in its physical state. This includes, but is not limited to, studies that improve our understanding of water mass transformation in the upper ocean and around the Antarctic margin, large-scale and regional ocean circulation, mesoscale / submesoscale processes, ocean mixing, atmosphere-ocean-ice interactions, upper ocean processes, and air-sea fluxes.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; High Latitude Environments; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Oceans; Climate dynamics; Climate variability; General or miscellaneous

OC11 Advancing Paleoclimate Studies of Global Change: Novel Proxies, Methods, and Insights

Organizers:
Nina Whitney, nwhitney@whoi.edu
Hunter Hughes, hphughes@email.unc.edu
Thomas Chalk, T.Chalk@noc.soton.ac.uk
Emma Reed, evreed@email.arizona.edu

Environmental signals recorded in biogenic carbonates have greatly advanced our understanding of Earth’s climate history from deep-time to the modern era. Extracting climate information from biogenic carbonates requires an interdisciplinary ‘toolset’ that often involves: (1) detailed knowledge of one or more organisms within a particular ecosystem; (2) quantitative modeling and/or geochemical data; and (3) relating individual- and local-scale phenomena to regional- and global-scale climate processes across multiple timescales. In the last decade, significant advancements in instrumentation and statistical analyses have helped steer the community towards a mechanistic understanding of how climate signals are incorporated into biogenic carbonates, providing new insights into the physiochemical pathways connecting observed proxy data to environmental variables. These same advancements have spurred the development of novel proxies and methods to extract and interpret climate signals with improved accuracy, precision, and/or resolution relative to traditional methods. Moreover, these novel methodologies can be applicable in regions where necessary input parameters for conventional methodologies cannot be constrained. In this timely session, we invite paleoclimatologists utilizing the physical and chemical properties of biogenic carbonates to share their advancements in both novel proxy/method development and mechanistic insights into biogenic carbonates as archives. Focusing on the value of building connections, this session will bring together diverse experts across related fields as we invite applications from a broad range of paleoclimatological disciplines.

Cross listed Tracks: Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Oceans; Geochemical tracers; Paleolimnology

OC12 ENSO dynamics and its impact on other basins based on theory, observation and modeling

Organizers:
Xiaolin Zhang, xz12j@my.fsu.edu
xiaolin zhang, xiaolin.zhang@uni-hamburg.de

El Nino and Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a coupled ocean-atmospheric phenomena with a period of 2 to 7 years. It is related to much of the year-to-year climate variability on the Earth and has a global impact (Indian Monsoon, US weather and the rainfall in Australia). Many theories have been advanced to explain the generation mechanism, such as Bjerknes mechanism, the delayed oscillator, the coupled ocean-atmosphere instability near the eastern edge of the western equatorial Pacific warm pool. But convincing theory is currently still lacking and some fundamental physics of ENSO is still unclear. Furthermore, as one of the most influential climate modes, it interacts with other basins through oceanic and atmospheric channels (such as Indian Ocean Upwelling, Atlantic Ocean). In this session, we invite contributions that examine the basic physics of ENSO generation, its prediction and its interaction with other basins from intraseasonal to decadal timescales.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Ocean Modeling

Keywords: Analytical modeling and laboratory experiments; Ocean predictability and prediction; ENSO; Indian Ocean

OC13 Dynamic linkages between paleoceanography, paleoecology and tectonic evolution across the Cenozoic

Organizers:
Matthew Huber, huberm@purdue.edu
Sora Kim, skim380@ucmerced.edu
Alexandra Jahn, alexandra.jahn@colorado.edu

Over the past 65 million years, climate has transitioned from a "greenhouse" state to the modern "icehouse" state. Causes of this transition continue to be actively debated. Central to the proposed processes and mechanisms for this shift are the opening of tectonic gateways (i.e., Tasman Seaway and Drake Passage) and reduction in greenhouse gas concentrations, affecting global ocean circulation and atmospheric temperature respectively. Dynamic interactions between the ocean dynamics, geodynamics, and paleoecological systems likely played critical roles in driving or modulating these trends and transitions, but these factors have not been as well studied as the climate trends themselves.

In this session, we will bring together the multiple dimensions related to paleoclimate and paleoceanography– geochemistry, paleoceanography, paleobiology, tectonics, and modelling with an emphasis on the role of the oceans and the life within them in understanding Cenozoic paleoclimate transitions. We welcome submissions with a multi-faceted, interdisciplinary approach to Cenozoic paleoclimate, either in approach, technique, or implication. We look forward to comparing and contrasting datasets and models, especially in relation to the dynamic interplay between climate, oceanography, tectonics, and ecology.

Cross listed Tracks: Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; High Latitude Environments; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Modeling

Keywords: Climate dynamics; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling; Geochemical tracers; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling; Geochemical tracers

OC14 Beyond a research dialogue: progress in testing marine CO2 removal methods

Organizers:
Lennart Bach, lennart.bach@utas.edu.au
Deborah Iglesias-Rodriguez, iglesias@ucsb.edu
Phil Renforth, P.Renforth@hw.ac.uk
Philip Boyd, philip.boyd@utas.edu.au

Research summarized in the IPCC report alongside political decisions made in Paris all confirm that rapid CO2 emissions reduction must be supplemented with gigatonne-scale atmospheric CO2 removal (CDR). The debate into environmental risks and/or co-benefits of marine CDR has gone on for decades, while atmospheric CO2 continues to rise by ~2 ppm per year. It is now the time to get beyond the dialogue and fill wide-spread knowledge gaps with scientific data. There is the urgent need to develop knock-out criteria for marine CDR methods, which can guide the scientific process and political decisions. Even more so as other lines of assessment (e.g. legal, social) depend on robust information from the scientific assessment to make progress. In this session we will focus on the science, technology, and social constraints behind current and emerging ocean CDR approaches. We encourage submissions on modelling simulations but also particularly those which aim to link modelling with observations and experimentation. Our goal is to shed light on the most suitable candidates for CO2 removal using the ocean.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade

Keywords: Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling; Phytoplankton; Nutrients and nutrient cycling

OC15 Ocean Acidification: Processes and Consequences in the Past and the Present and for Future Mitigation Strategies

Organizers:
Nina Bednarsek, nina.bednarsek@gmail.com
Bernard Boudreau, bernie.boudreau@dal.ca
Richard Feely, richard.a.feely@noaa.gov
Jess Adkins, jess@gps.caltech.edu

Ocean acidification has occurred naturally in the past but has gained scientific and societal prominence with the current anthropogenic acceleration and major biological and ecological consequences. Past effects have been profound, while the current effects might be enhanced due to simultaneous effect of ocean acidification with other interactive stressors. Major consequences have included enhanced calcium carbonate (CaCO3) dissolution, both in the pelagic and coastal oceans, with subsequent impact on biological pump and carbon sequestration. We also face, as a global society, the problem of ameliorating of what we have created over the last two and a half centuries. Mapping the changes is fundamental for predicting alterations across natural-socio-economic systems, including near-future mitigation and adaptation strategies. This session integrates multiple themes. Firstly, it considers changes in carbonate dissolution through the water column and across the seafloor that accompany acidification, which have important implications for the biological pump and feedbacks in controlling both oceanic carbonate chemistry and atmospheric CO2. Secondly, it focuses on the integration of the chemical-biological processes related to the regional and large-scale processes of OA, with implications for economically and ecologically important species and indicators, biodiversity restructuring, ecosystem change and services. Third, it investigates mitigation strategies and adaptation solutions related to ocean acidification. To these themes, we invite investigations related to the observation and modelling of current and long-term changes; experimental and synthesis studies that incorporate biogeochemical and ecological processes of the past, present and future ocean acidification, with an eye on alterations in CaCO3 dissolution, effects on the biological pump, investigations of related biodiversity and ecosystem changes, and with a link to mitigation and adaptation strategies.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Impacts of global change; Oceans; Carbon cycling

OC16 Marine Climate Extremes: PART 1 Mechanisms, Predictability & Coastal Impacts

Organizers:
Emanuele Di Lorenzo, edl@gatech.edu
Steven Bograd, Steven.Bograd@noaa.gov
Nadia Pinardi, nadia.pinardi@unibo.it
Gerald Meehl, meehl@ucar.edu
Antonietta Capotondi, antonietta.capotondi@noaa.gov

There is recognition of the increased risk and social-ecological impacts of more frequent and more severe climate extreme events globally, including tropical storms, marine heatwaves, hypoxic, & acidification events. Coastal communities, which are highly reliant on their coastal ecosystem services and infrastructure, are most vulnerable to these extreme events and in need of a suite of potential solutions to these climate-driven changes. In this session PART 1, we invite presentations that address multi-disciplinary aspects of climate extreme events, including their physical drivers, mechanisms, predictability on seasonal to interannual time scales, and impacts on coastal communities & services. Building on the ongoing efforts from PICES, CLIVAR, Ocean Visions, CATALYST, and the newly launched UN Ocean Decade Programmes CoastPredict, GEOS, and SMARTNET, the session aims at highlighting (1) dynamics and predictability of climate extremes and quantification of their social-ecological-environmental impacts, (2) advances and challenges in delivering actionable forecasts to coastal communities and, (3) ongoing efforts on coastal solutions to climate extremes under the UN Ocean Decade.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade

Keywords: Regional climate change; Coastal processes; Climate and interannual variabilityEcosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling

Co-sponsors: PICES

OC17 Toward Predictive Understanding of Pacific Decadal Variability and its Global Implications

Organizers:
Antonietta Capotondi, antonietta.capotondi@noaa.gov
Cristian Proistosescu, cristi@illinois.edu
Sara Sanchez, sara.sanchez@colorado.edu
Malte Stuecker, stuecker@hawaii.edu

Tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs) affect the global climate across a wide range of timescales. Through their strong influence on atmospheric circulation and the global energy budget, changes in Tropical Pacific SSTs have major implications for both regional and global climate variability, sensitivity to external forcing, and predictability.

Several international efforts are underway to develop skillful decadal prediction systems, but the origin of these decadal variations and their degree of predictability are still poorly understood. In addition, discrepancies exist between the observed and modeled SST evolution over recent decades. While the pattern of tropical SST variations over the recent observational record exhibits enhanced warming in the western equatorial Pacific relative to the eastern part of the basin, consistent with a strengthened Walker circulation, current state-of-the-art climate models generally display a weakening of the Walker circulation and enhanced warming in the eastern equatorial Pacific.

Proposed mechanisms of tropical Pacific decadal variability involve changes in the strength of the Subtropical-Tropical Cells, oceanic Rossby wave dynamics, tropical-extratropical atmospheric interactions, influences from the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, the response to anthropogenic and volcanic aerosols, and more, but the relative role of these potential contributors to observed decadal variations is not understood.

This session welcomes contributions on all aspects of Tropical Pacific Decadal Variability, including process understanding, connections with extra-tropical Pacific decadal variations, inter-basin interactions, prediction efforts, global and regional impacts, as well as past evolution and future projections, using theory, instrumental and paleoclimate observations, and modeling approaches. Studies aimed at clarifying the role of tropical Pacific oceanic processes in the origin of decadal timescales are especially welcome.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger

Keywords: Climate variability; Coupled models of the climate system; Decadal ocean variability; ENSO

OC18 Marine Climate Extremes: PART 2 Regional Downscaling & Climate Projections

Organizers:
Diana Bernstein, diana.bernstein@usm.edu
Aneesh Subramanian, aneesh.subramanian@colorado.edu
Dillon Amaya, dillon.amaya@colorado.edu
Brian Dzwonkowski, briandz@disl.org

There is recognition of the increased risk and social-ecological impacts of more frequent and more severe climate extreme events globally, including tropical storms, marine heatwaves, hypoxic, & acidification events. Regional climate change information is critical for developing mitigation and adaptation strategies. Regional modeling efforts inherit model biases and errors from global models that are used to drive them. Therefore, it is important to characterize the drivers and uncertainties of extreme marine and coastal events in a changing climate in order to assess their variability at finer scales. In this session PART 2, we invite presentations on modeling and observational efforts that advance our understanding of regional downscaling of scale climate variability and change, and their impact on the frequency and persistence of extreme events in a coastal setting. This session aims at highlighting (1) advances in regional downscaling of climate variability and climate change projections using both mechanistic and statistical approaches, (2) estimation of future climate uncertainties on social-ecological-environmental impacts, and (3) the delivery of climate information to coastal stakeholders.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Regional climate change; Coastal processes; Air/sea interactions

OC19 Icefield2Ocean and Ridge2Reef: A Collaborative Cross-Regional Approach to Actionable Climate Adaptation Science in Alaska and Pacific Islands Watershed Ecosystems

Organizers:
Heather Kerkering, hkerkering@usgs.gov
Ryan Toohey, rtoohey@usgs.gov
Stephen Gray, sgray@usgs.gov
Mari-Vaughn Johnson, mvjohnson@usgs.gov

Driven by geographical, ecological, and cultural similarities of watershed systems in two remote and climatically distinct regions, the Pacific Islands-Alaska (PI-AK) Climate Adaptation Science Centers (CASCs) recently initiated cross-regional collaborative partnerships that address mutual climate adaptation challenges. The PI-AK Collaboration aims to inform adaptation, management, and planning while emphasizing the co-production of actionable science with communities and resource managers. Steep watersheds with dramatic environmental gradients are common features of both Ridge-to-Reef (R2R) in the Pacific Islands and Icefield-to-Ocean (I2O) ecosystems in Southeast Alaska. Climate change is contributing to significant alterations of processes in R2R/I2O watersheds, with impacts throughout terrestrial, freshwater, and near-shore marine ecosystems via fluctuations in the flow of water, energy, and nutrients. Human communities in both regions depend heavily upon healthy watersheds for food, water, recreation, economy, and cultural identify.

In this 6-5-30 panel session, the first cohort of researchers and project partners from Southeast AK and Hawai’i will highlight the scientific findings of changing climate dynamics with resulting or projected impacts on watershed processes, fish habitat, nearshore ecosystem dynamics and health, and coral reef productivity. Each presenter will also speak toward their efforts to build student research and exchange opportunities, facilitate co-production, and address the link between their research and actionable science for the PI-AK Collaboration. Whether in-person or virtual, all audience members will have the ability to interact with the panelists for a 30min Q&A and contribute to the PI-AK Collaboration effort by submitting responses to an online (available on mobile devices and computers) questionnaire.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change

Keywords: Regional climate change; Impacts of global changeBiogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling; Pacific Ocean

OC20 Marine Climate Extremes: PART 3 Biogeochemical Extremes and Ecosystems Response

Organizers:
Thomas Froelicher, thomas.froelicher@climate.unibe.ch
Nicolas Gruber, nicolas.gruber@env.ethz.ch
Marisol Garcia Reyes, marisolgr@gmail.com
Nina Bednarsek, NinaB@sccwrp.org

There is recognition of the increased risk and social-ecological impacts of more frequent and more severe climate extreme events globally, including tropical storms, marine heatwaves, hypoxic & acidification events. While our knowledge of the physical dynamics of climate extremes has grown rapidly in recent years, ocean biogeochemical extremes characterized by low oxygen, nutrient concentrations or high acidity are neither well characterized nor are their impacts on marine life well understood. With trends in ocean warming, acidification, and deoxygenation projected to continue for decades, these types of extremes are likely to increase in frequency, duration, and intensity, leading to a high risk of severe, faster, pervasive, and in some cases irreversible impacts on natural and socio-economic systems. Of particular concern are compound events with multiple concurrent or consecutive drivers (e.g. marine heatwaves co-occur with hypoxic conditions) that may cross sensitive thresholds and exacerbate impacts on marine ecosystems. In this session PART 3, we invite presentations on regional and global changes in ocean biogeochemical extremes and compound events (heatwaves, hypoxia, acidification, nutrient stress) and how these events impact marine organisms, biodiversity and ecosystem services. This session aims at highlighting (1) understanding of compound biogeochemical extreme events in the ocean and the sensitivity of marine organisms and ecosystems, (2) the degree to which they can be represented in current climate models, and (3) the design of appropriate management strategies to preserve ecosystem services.

This session seeks current knowledge as well as new and evolving insights stemming from integrated observational and modeling efforts to advance our understanding of the regional and global changes in ocean compound events (heatwaves, hypoxia, acidification, nutrient stress) and how these extreme events impact marine organisms, biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Physical and biogeochemical interactions; Air/sea interactionsEcosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling

OC21 GO-SHIP: Integrating physical, chemical, and biological oceanography using Global Repeat Hydrographic Surveys

Organizers:
Adam Martiny, amartiny@uci.edu
Leticia Barbero, leticia.barbero@noaa.gov
Viviane Menezes, vmenezes@whoi.edu
Richard Feely, richard.a.feely@noaa.gov

As a component of the GO-SHIP global repeat hydrography effort, researchers from around the world have worked to measure physical, chemical, and now biological ocean properties at high spatial resolution, precision, and accuracy, approximately once per decade. Repeat hydrographic measurements have proven critical for revealing variability and long-term trends in ocean heat content, salinity, carbon storage, pH declines, deoxygenation, nutrient distributions, and most recently plankton biodiversity and biogeochemical functioning. In this session, we invite contributions from those who are interpreting these physical, chemical, and biological observations to gain a holistic understanding of ocean physicochemical changes and biological responses. Submissions from researchers who rely on repeat hydrography cruises for in situ or remote sensor deployments/validation or design of Earth System, biogeochemical and oceanic models are also invited.

Cross listed Tracks: Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Ocean observing systems; Decadal ocean variability; Carbon cycling

For More Information: https://www.go-ship.org/

OC22 Science and Application of Equitable Solutions to Future Sea-Level Rise

Organizers:
Emily Smith, emily.a.smith@noaa.gov
Benjamin Hamlington, benjamin.d.hamlington@jpl.nasa.gov
Renee Collini, r.collini@msstate.edu
Bhairav Narkhede, bhairavn19@gmail.com

Climate-driven changes in sea level are impacting coastal communities around the world. Based on projections of future sea-level rise, the impacts are expected to worsen with consequences across many sectors of society (e.g., public health, emergency preparedness). The impacts of sea-level rise intersect and combine in ways that can lead to disproportionate exposure for some coastal communities or segments of communities (i.e. lower income and BIPOC communities). Access to the underlying science and data must improve, and solutions must be equitable and broadly available to entire communities in order to protect them. This session focuses on the ongoing and future impacts of sea-level rise on these communities. Presentations covering scientific studies on the implications of past, present and future sea-level change for these communities are welcome, as are application-focused presentations that cover turning the available science into action to produce equitable solutions for the future.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Education & Outreach

Keywords: Coastal processes

OC24 Observing Coastal Climate Change- Integrating across Global to Local Scales to Improve Understanding and Response

Organizers:
Jan Newton, janewton@uw.edu
Seth Danielson, sldanielson@alaska.edu
Clarissa Anderson, cra002@ucsd.edu
Roger Griffis, roger.b.griffis@noaa.gov

This session brings together speakers from climate, coastal, and ocean sciences to discuss how changes in global climate are revealed at the coasts. Climate change-driven events can be magnified at the coast and have significant ecological and societal impacts, such as marine heat waves, extreme storms, sea level rise, ocean acidification, hypoxia, harmful algal blooms, and shifting species distributions. The complexity and geographic variability of the impacts require sustained observations and modeling at appropriate scales and must be conducted in context of global processes driving local responses in order to support effective responses. Many groups are engaged in observations, modeling, and developing derived information products to help communities anticipate and prepare for climate impacts. Nationally, the Integrated Ocean Observing System, NOAA’s Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessment Program, Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program, National Marine Fisheries Service, National Marine Sanctuaries and National Estuarine Research Reserves Sentinel Sites, and NSF’s Long-Term Ecological Research Program, among others, collect time series data to track changes associated with climate variability and change. These networks have proven effective at helping communities prepare and adapt to change. International groups, such as UNESCO’s Observations Coordination Group and the Global Ocean Observing System, are needed to link global drivers to coastal systems. Increased collaboration is essential for integration across global to local scales, for accurate coastal climate assessments, and for informed responses that support resilient communities. This session includes speakers from a broad spectrum of scientific disciplines discussing what climate, ocean, and coastal data are revealing, and the ecological and societal implications. We seek to identify key needs, gaps, and next steps to improve monitoring and prediction of coastal climate impacts.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Fish and Fisheries; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade

Keywords: Impacts of global change; Real-time and responsive information delivery; Coastal processes; North America

OC25 Oceans and Human Health: Climate Change, Food Safety, and Emerging Contaminants

Organizers:
Anika Dzierlenga, anika.dzierlenga@nih.gov
Alicia Ramsaran, alicia.ramsaran@nih.gov
Fred Tyson, tyson2@niehs.nih.gov

Existing in a close, mutually influential relationship, the oceans and climate continue to have a large influence on ecology and human health. Alterations in oceanic properties and composition have been observed over in the last few decades resulting from climate change and human activities. Approximately 40% of the world’s population lives within 100 km of the coast, including communities that are impacted by changes in ocean temperature and salinity, extreme weather events and rainfall patterns, and rising sea levels. Population growth is generating high levels of interaction among people, microbial and algal assemblages, and natural and built environments. The effect that this has on water quality, coastal ecosystems, aquaculture, fisheries, ecosystem function, seafood contamination, and human health cannot be understated. With recent advances in biochemical, analytical, toxicological, computational, modeling, and forecasting methods, new modes to disseminate transparent and accessible scientific knowledge, and a general rise in commitment to environmental justice initiatives, there is opportunity for researchers to connect basic and applied science for social and community-level change.

Areas of interest include those which affect human and animal health (natural and anthropogenic risks), coastal recreational or commercial shellfish harvesting, ocean acidification, nutrient discharge, impacts on aquaculture and ecosystem function, algal blooms, emerging contaminants in seafood and/or drinking water sources (microplastics, metals, and PFAS), fish kills, shellfish pathology, and other wildlife diseases. Multidisciplinary approaches are of particular interest, such as those combining cutting edge quantitative techniques, water movement, loading and flux assessments, novel modeling approaches, and mechanisms of toxicity. Submissions addressing stakeholders’ concerns and promote broader impacts of the science and dissemination of research findings are encouraged.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity

Keywords: Impacts of global change; Marine pollution

Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management

OD01 Artificial Intelligence in Ocean Modelling

Organizers:
Christopher Irrgang, irrgang@gfz-potsdam.de
Carrie Wall Bell, carrie.wall@noaa.gov
Jan Saynisch-Wagner, saynisch@gfz-potsdam.de

The ongoing advancement of accessible machine learning tools, facilitated by cloud infrastructure and scalable compute engines, has opened up new avenues to explore complex scientific questions. The use of (un)supervised machine learning methods like artificial neural networks, random forests, and decision trees, are emerging rapidly in ocean science research. The versatility of machine learning allows for novel applications and revisiting old ones such as pattern recognition, data mining and compression, spatial interpolation, time series analysis and filtering, hybrid ocean modes, observation inversion and downscaling, forecasting, parameterization and many more. This session aims to examine the current practices, tools, and future direction of artificial intelligence in numerical ocean modelling and invites contributions tackling key problems of ocean models using novel approaches from machine learning. The session is also open to common drawbacks and limitations of machine learning and how to solve them. In particular, we invite contributions towards physics-informed machine learning and explainability approaches that close the knowledge gap to classical numerical and statistical models in ocean sciences.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Earth system modeling; Machine learning; Data assimilation, integration and fusion; General or miscellaneous

OD02 Advances in Data Science for Ocean Uncertainty Quantification

Organizers:
Donata Giglio, donata.giglio@colorado.edu
Shane Elipot, selipot@rsmas.miami.edu
Alison Gray, argray@uw.edu
Mikael Kuusela, mkuusela@andrew.cmu.edu

Ocean and climate observing systems now provide the research community with an unprecedented amount of observations, both in (near-)real-time and after delayed-mode processing. These data originate from numerous different platforms with a wide variety of sensors and sampling characteristics and include remotely-sensed and in situ observations (from ships, moorings, and autonomous instruments). Data streams from ocean observing systems are not only analyzed for research but are also assimilated into numerical models to produce forecasts on daily to decadal timescales along with state estimates and reanalyses. Fundamentally, all observations are estimates and thus have some inherent degree of uncertainty (instrumental, model, and/or statistical). To interpret scientific results meaningfully, we must accurately quantify this uncertainty, in the observations and in derived products such as gridded fields and data assimilation output. New developments in statistics and machine learning, together with advances in conceptual understanding of uncertainty quantification (UQ), are beginning to transform the derivation, dissemination, and utilization of uncertainty information associated with ocean and climate data covering a broad range of spatial and temporal scales. Fully capitalizing on these developments has the potential to garner significant, widespread improvements in the qualitative and quantitative interpretation of ocean observations and related products.

This session, sponsored by US CLIVAR, solicits observational, theoretical, and numerical studies that make novel use of techniques from statistics and machine learning to analyze datasets and their uncertainties in oceanography and related areas of climate science. Presentation topics may include UQ in the context of model diagnostics, validation, and parameterization; generation and analysis of gridded fields; ocean data assimilation; observational datasets; representational errors; and other related topics.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Modeling; Ocean Technologies and Observatories

Keywords: Uncertainty; Machine learning; Instruments, sensors, techniques; Climate and interannual variability

OD03 Realizing the Promise of Marine AI: Moving from Research to Operations

Organizers:
Benjamin Richards, benjamin.richards@noaa.gov
Christin Khan, christin.khan@noaa.gov
Marayam Esfarjani, maryam.esfarjani@ibsscorp.com
Jules Jaffe, jjaffe@ucsd.edu
Anthony Hoogs, anthony.hoogs@kitware.com

While AI/ML shows immense promise, fewer than 20% of all projects ever deliver actionable business outcomes (Gartner, 2019). A full 87% of data science projects never make it into production (Venturebeat, 2021). To our knowledge, no Marine AI solution has yet achieved full operational use. Why not?

Before AI, Adobe Photoshop(R) revolutionized digital photography by providing an Intuitive and High-Power interface, easily accessible by users across the technical spectrum. More recently, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Spotify, Netflix and others have harnessed the power of artificial intelligence, integrating it seamlessly—and often invisibly—into the user experience. This laser-like focus on simplicity has yet to be realized in Marine and Environmental AI.

The majority of AI projects remain alchemy—run by coding wizards whose talents cannot scale to wide- spread operational usage within the marine, ocean, coastal, and climate domain. While AI is starting to streamline data processing and analysis, most projects remain proof-of- concept—lacking mature, intuitive, “no code”, interfaces required for operational use.

In many cases, AI/ML model development remains the end goal, rather than simply a means to efficiently achieving larger operational scientific and management goals. To flourish within this domain, AI must cease to be a “thing”, transforming into a seamless and intuitive aspect of routine scientific operations.

This session brings together leaders in the marine, environmental, and computer science communities to connect current scientific, business, and technical challenges with novel, intuitive, and actionable operational solutions. We will address the full life- cycle of AI Operationalization, MLops concepts, as well as organizational and cultural shifts needed to operationalize AI development, create trustworthy AI and up- scale AI solutions from research to full operational usage.

Cross listed Tracks: Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; Fish and Fisheries; Islands and Reefs; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy

Keywords: Software tools and services; Machine learning; Data and information discovery; New fields

OD04 Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Ocean Data, Modeling and Applications

Organizers:
Gregory Dusek, gregory.dusek@noaa.gov
Ruoying He, rhe@ncsu.edu
Philippe Tissot, philippe.tissot@tamucc.edu
V Ramaswamy, v.ramaswamy@noaa.gov

This session will highlight theories, development and application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to ocean and Great Lakes data and models to improve understanding and prediction. Ocean and Great Lakes data benefitting from AI/ML application is broad, ranging from physical observations of the ocean, atmosphere and climate to dynamical, ecological and biological modeling and assessments. Models utilizing AI/ML include those with physical, numerical, statistical and empirical foundations. AI and ML have emerged to become powerful tools 1) to improve the fidelity, computational efficiency, and applications of ocean modeling, 2) to QA/QC and extract information from observations and diagnoses of model outputs; 3) to post-process model output, detect features and patterns, and predict extreme events; 4) to produce new scientific discoveries and value-added intelligence products for ocean and Great Lakes research and 5) to improve the understanding and simulation of ocean circulation. We invite contributions in these research areas which apply AI/ML to data and models across all aspects of ocean and Great Lakes science. Abstracts which consider broadly applicable AI topics or multi-disciplinary AI applications are especially encouraged. These topics may include explainable AI, AI for scientific discovery, predictions of extreme events, AI for understanding and predicting climate change and resultant impacts, data recovery and synthesis, and marine ecosystems. This will be a hybrid scientific session, so both virtual and in-person submissions are welcome.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling

Keywords: Machine learning; Data and information discovery; Numerical modeling; Ocean predictability and prediction

OD05 Advances in the analysis and representation of spatio-temporal data

Organizers:
Claudie Beaulieu, beaulieu@ucsc.edu
Gregory Britten, gbritten@mit.edu
Alison Gray, argray@uw.edu

Modern oceanography increasingly involves analysis of larger and more complex observational datasets, including those generated from satellites and autonomous in-situ platforms, as well as rapidly growing volumes of numerical model output. This expanding access to data of all types drives the need to develop appropriate and efficient statistical representations of the complex spatio-temporal variability found in oceanographic data. Using these data to compute accurate estimates, quantify uncertainties, and design observational networks requires characterizing spatial and temporal covariance patterns that depend on the variable under consideration, the measurement technique, and the spatio-temporal scales of interest.

This session calls for studies that develop or implement state-of-the-art space-time representations to analyze observational datasets and/or numerical model output. Relevant approaches include Bayesian, frequentist, and machine learning methods. We welcome submissions focusing on physical, chemical, biological, and geological properties. Presentations may focus on, for example, space-time modeling of float, glider, and drifter data; shipboard, moored, and satellite-based observations; and gridded fields, as well as Lagrangian particle trajectories from numerical simulations. Techniques of interest include parameter or state estimation, interpolation, trend analyses, survey design, and data fusion, among others. The goal of this session is to bring together oceanographers, statisticians, modelers, and observationalists to better understand the spatio-temporal structure of new oceanographic datasets and thereby advance our ability to observe, model, and ultimately comprehend the ocean and its crucial role in the natural and anthropogenic systems of the planet.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management

Keywords: Oceans; Temporal analysis and representation; Spatial analysis and representation; Data assimilation, integration and fusion

OD06 Advances in Machine Learning for Oceanographic Sensing Applications

Organizers:
Michael Bianco, mbianco@ucsd.edu
Venugopalan Pallayil, venu@nus.edu.sg
Hanumant Singh, ha.singh@northeastern.edu
Kitty Kam, kitty.kam@dal.ca

The use of Machine Learning (ML) for analysis of geophysical data is now ubiquitous in academia and industry. In this session, we will bring together scientists and practitioners from a range of related disciplines in Earth and oceanographic signal processing, who are using and developing cutting-edge ML-based analysis techniques. We are specifically interested in examining issues relevant to the use of ML in a broad range oceanographic and Earth sensing modalities, including acoustics, optics, and sensor array processing. Challenges to be addressed include ML-model generalization in uncertain environments, lack of labelled datasets (e.g. unsupervised and semi-supervised learning), and ML model prediction confidence). We also welcome contributions towards statistical sampling strategies and techniques as applied to ML in the area of ocean sensing and monitoring.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Modeling; Ocean Technologies and Observatories

Keywords: Instruments, sensors, techniques

Co-sponsors: IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society

OD07 Sharing the Wealth: Overcoming Barriers and Finding Opportunities for Community-Based Solutions to Data Sharing

Organizers:
Corinne Bassin, cbassin@schmidtocean.org
Allison Miller, amiller@schmidtocean.org
Vicki Ferrini, ferrini@ldeo.columbia.edu

While oceanographic data is increasingly being made publicly available, significant volumes of data remain inaccessible and difficult to integrate/re-use. This session will explore the challenges and opportunities for increasing the availability and usability of interdisciplinary oceanographic data and other information products that may meet the needs of a variety of stakeholders. We will also aim to address how to motivate data holders to share and increase the reusability and value of their data by openly discussing the barriers preventing effective data sharing, and the motivations behind, and benefits of, data sharing and enabling re-use. Brief presentations and open discussion will amplify the friction points and opportunities we face as an interdisciplinary global community if we are to deliver truly actionable, holistic solutions for the ocean.

Barriers to oceanographic data sharing, which span from how data are initially packaged and distributed, to ensuring that FAIR data standards are met, will be touched upon, yet this session will also seek to establish a user-centric perspective on barriers that inhibit scientific re-use of data.

Choosing how and where to improve upon current data sharing capabilities, and identifying where the opportunities lie, is the first step toward implementing community-based solutions. It is also important to look at those learning opportunities, success stories, or solutions that might already exist around the world, such as the Seabed 2030 Initiative, Pangeo, and Ditchley Conferences. This session will aim to interact with attendees by asking for direct participant feedback via slid.do, to help to develop community-based suggestions as we look forward to the opportunities of the coming decade. This session also seeks to identify potential ways that professional societies, foundations, funding agencies, and global initiatives can help in these endeavors.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade

Keywords: Data and information governance; Data assimilation, integration and fusion; Data and information discovery; General or miscellaneous

OD09 Ocean Visualization: Extracting insight, interactive analysis, exploration, and outreach

Organizers:
Thomas Butkiewicz, tbutkiewicz@ccom.unh.edu
Andrew Stevens, ahstevens@gmail.com

Scientific visualization has applications across all coastal and ocean sciences. From simple infographics that explain scientific findings to the public, to interactive virtual reality applications used to perform complex analysis on 4D ocean simulations, visualization helps transform our data into information.

Visualizations captivate and engage audiences, and effectively communicate the impact and importance of ocean sciences. The increasing abilities of web browsers have improved accessibility by making it possible to deliver interactive 2D and 3D visualizations to the public without requiring them to install specialized (and often expensive) software, or download massive datasets.

Interactive 3D technologies, such as virtual reality and augmented reality, have also become more accessible, with mass production reducing their cost significantly over the last few years. VR and AR devices have great potential for ocean science researchers and their outreach efforts: The combination of true, stereoscopic 3D viewing and six-degree-of-freedom handheld interaction devices provides a powerful interface for conducting analyses on inherently 3D data. Furthermore, the immersive nature of VR makes it possible for anyone to experience the wonders of the underwater world, without the great expense and training required to do so in real life.

Please submit and share with us the visualizations that you have created to analyze ocean data and to present your research findings to the public. We welcome contributions across the entire range of visualization: infographics, interactive applications, immersive experiences, websites, videos, etc.

Cross listed Tracks: Education & Outreach

Keywords: Geoscience education research; Visualization and portrayalGeneral or miscellaneous; Techniques applicable in three or more fields

OD10 Uncertainty Quantification in Natural Hazards Associated with Coastal Processes

Organizers:
Jared Whitehead, whitehead@mathematics.byu.edu
Kyle Mandli, kyle.mandli@columbia.edu
Serge Guillas, s.guillas@ucl.ac.uk
Justin Krometis, jkrometi@vt.edu

A majority of the Earth's population lives in coastal regions, and hence are at high risk of flooding caused by tsunamis, cyclones, and other storms. To mitigate the potential risk to these individuals, accurate mathematical models are necessary to make reliable predictions of these different hazards. Although significant progress has been made in the development of these models, there is still much work to be done with regard to quantifying the uncertainty and sensitivity of these models to underlying assumptions. Before accurate predictions can be made for the population at risk, the relative uncertainty must be quantified and examined carefully, to guarantee that the predicted risk is reliably ascertained. This session is geared toward exactly these issues, and seeks to bring individuals together from a variety of backgrounds to discuss and further develop strategies in the quantification of uncertainty in coastal hazards.

The session will be dedicated to recent progress in the modeling of the various hazards mentioned above, and the quantification of uncertainty in those models. In addition, this session will focus on the elimination of uncertainty due to inaccurate and/or anecdotal data and observations that are used to make future predictions. Statistical and geophysical methods will be discussed that include a combination of high level computing, mathematical analysis, and geophysical interpretation, with the end goal of impacting policy decisions for the millions of individuals that live nearest the regions of highest impact for these hazards.

Cross listed Tracks: Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Hydrodynamic modeling; Nearshore processes; Tsunamis and storm surges

OD11 The uptake of data by citizen scientists, aggregators and end-users: successes, challenges and gaps in the dataflow

Organizers:
Patrick Gorringe, patrick.gorringe@smhi.se
James Sprinks, jsprinks@earthwatch.org.uk
Peter Thijsse, peter@maris.nl
Emilie Breviere, emilie.breviere@smhi.se

Citizen science is a particularly impactful channel to collect data and its utility has been proven on small scales, yet the groundbreaking, and absolutely necessary, potential of citizen science has yet to be realized. Over the last decade, marine citizen science projects have provided a cost-effective means to collect extensive data sets covering vast spatio-temporal scales where conventional data collection is limited in operation, such as coastal seas. However many initiatives fail to be sustainable, and fail to reach acceptance of their data by scientists and by policy makers. To be efficient and successful a project should provide data with sufficient quality, structure and availability to be used by professionals and ensure that citizen scientists realize and appreciate the impact of their contribution towards the understanding of the scientific big picture.

When studying the flow of citizen science data, it follows a series of steps from the providers to the users, via data aggregators. The essential steps of this process are the acquisition, management, flow in key infrastructure, evaluation and impact analyses, use in ocean models, research and forecasting, and public visualization.

The objective of the co-organizers is to provide a session during which participants will share experiences on successes and failures, needs and limitations in the data flow chain. The session wishes to be a unique niche for the numerous actors of the data flow in marine citizen science initiatives to meet and exchange. It will explore current and future collaborations, hear from invited experts about wider citizen science initiatives and discuss how marine data aggregators in its next phase can more systematically link with citizen science to not only expand the data provision from citizen science, but also find ways to encourage citizen science to work closer with data aggregators across the full value chain.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management

Keywords: General or miscellaneous; New fields (not classifiable under other headings)

OD12 Big Data for a Big Ocean 2022

Organizers:
Kenneth Casey, kenneth.casey@noaa.gov
Steve Diggs, sdiggs@ucsd.edu
Danie Kinkade, dkinkade@whoi.edu

Eight years ago, oceanographers and data management specialists gathered at the 2014 Ocean Sciences meeting to discuss our community’s emerging and novel approaches to the Big Data challenges presented by ocean data’s growing complexity and volume. Again in 2018 the community met and marked significant progress in managing Big Data, which had fully emerged as a dominant issue for our field. For the 2022 Ocean Sciences meeting, the community is invited to return to these discussions and mark progress on the Big data tools, technologies, and services to collect, store, preserve, process, discover, access, visualize, and analyze big ocean data. Submissions that look forward to emerging problems and their innovative solutions are also requested, as well as lessons-learned from attempts to leverage newer technologies and services like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) for data management. Contributions are encouraged from across the academic, commercial, and government sectors to foster partnerships and innovations to solve these big ocean data challenges and enable the next generation of ocean scientists and their applications.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Technologies and Observatories

Keywords: Data management, preservation, rescue; Data and information discovery; Cyberinfrastructure; High-performance computing

OD13 Real-time automated decision making for ecosystem study and management

Organizers:
Eric Orenstein, eorenstein@mbari.org
Christian Briseño-Avena, cbrisenoavena@sandiego.edu
Emlyn Davies, emlyn.davies@sintef.no
Moritz Schmid, schmidm@oregonstate.edu
Ryan Searcy, rtsearcy@stanford.edu

The past two decades have seen rapid advances in observational in situ technologies and the analytic techniques needed to handle their resulting data streams. In situ imaging systems, optical payloads, and genomic sampling devices are now frequently deployed on moorings, floats, vessels, and autonomous vehicles. Such tools generate massive amounts of data that scientists are increasingly analyzing with a suite of machine learning (ML) tools to automate classification and ease the human annotation burden. These workflows have historically been used to sort data taxonomically after collection to study diverse biological phenomena. Biological oceanographers are now looking to leverage such high-throughput systems to go beyond post hoc observational studies based on taxonomy alone. We invite practitioners from across the community to share new approaches that enhance monitoring capabilities by rethinking traditional classification boundaries or building ML-supported systems into experimental planning and monitoring initiatives. Such tools might include: real-time mission planning based on ML sorted data (e.g., images, -omics, passive and active acoustics); time-series analysis for policy or industrial decision making; or functional trait detection for novel perspectives on ecosystem dynamics. This session aims to highlight the state-of-the-art in leveraging data collected from the wide diversity of sensors, platforms and environments needed to provide a holistic understanding of ocean environments. We will provide a forum for practitioners to present their approaches in a hybrid format. We especially encourage applicants to demonstrate their systems, either in real-time or via recordings, that either interpret or use data on the fly.

Cross listed Tracks: Fish and Fisheries; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Technologies and Observatories

Keywords: Machine learning; Real-time and responsive information delivery; Instruments, sensors, and techniques; Population dynamics and ecology

OD15 Analyzing Sea Ice with Machine Learning Techniques

Organizers:
Oceana Francis, oceanaf@hawaii.edu
Deniz Gedikli, egedikli@hawaii.edu

As climate change accelerates rapidly throughout the world, research has shown that the regions that are the most severely affected are the Arctic and the Antarctic. Therefore, it is especially important to monitor geophysical parameters at the polar regions to assess the impacts of climate change. One such parameter is sea ice drift, which yields insights into the rates of global warming as well as key impacts on oceans and their ecological systems. Furthermore, analyzing the rate of melting sea ice aids in the understanding of climate change; sea ice is also important in reflecting solar energy. Changes in sea ice can disrupt normal ocean circulation. More generally, because sea ice is present in highly dynamic environments that involve winds and ocean currents, it can yield insights about how society can work to implement policies to both mitigate and adapt to climate change. Recently, machine learning methods have emerged as a key asset in assessing sea ice and deriving the insights that come with it. In terms of techniques, these range from simple linear regression to random forest ensemble models (RFs), and from support vector machines (SVMs) to artificial neural networks (ANNs). For example, harnessing convolutional neural networks (CNNs) on multitemporal satellite imagery data can yield results on the rate and severity of ice melt. Parameters to consider include concentration, thickness, drift velocity, and more, with machine learning-ready data collected from buoys, satellites, drones, in addition to feet on the ground. The goal of this session is to foster the interdisciplinary collaborations that are necessary at this exciting intersection. While artificial intelligence is crucial for the future of this area of study, we recognize the unique importance of domain-specific knowledge. Therefore, we seek contributions from both the computer science and cryospheric sciences communities.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling

Keywords: Earth system modeling; Machine learning

Ocean Modeling

OM01 Coupling Coastal Hydrodynamic and Hydrologic Models Using a Community-Based Approach

Organizers:
Patrick Burke, pat.burke@noaa.gov
Trey Flowers, trey.flowers@noaa.gov
Rick Luettich, rick_luettich@unc.edu
Liv Herdman, lherdman@usgs.gov

Millions of Americans living in coastal areas do not have access to accurate, timely information on flooding, water quality, or water availability. Hydrodynamic and hydrologic models by themselves do not properly represent these complex coastal zone, estuarine, and riverine processes. Coupling of these models in the near shore domain, informed by stakeholder requirements and enhanced by collaborative community development, can help to fill this gap to provide actionable information for flood hazard studies and for forecasting from 0-10 days at local, regional, and national scales. Ultimately, coupling efforts will result in a more accurate delineation of water hazards, more effective hazard mitigation, and a continental-scale forecasting capability to support decisions related to inland and coastal flooding, navigation, emergency hazard response, water quality, and water management. The partnerships and collaborations across disciplinary and geographic boundaries that support coastal coupling modeling activities will help to advance the development of community-based modeling approaches. Coastal coupling is a nexus of atmospheric, coastal, and hydrologic modeling, with connections to subsurface processes, remote sensing, geospatial data analysis, bathy/topo digital elevation models, data assimilation, anthropogenic effects, big data, decision support, calibration and parameter estimation, machine learning, model testing, and evaluation. This session welcomes contributions on any of these topics, as well as the facilitation of collaborations, and enhancing community involvement.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling

Keywords: Community modeling frameworks; Coastal processes; Estuarine processes; Hydrodynamic modeling

OM02 Pairing autonomous monitoring with modeling to expand capacity and develop new understanding of coastal ocean systems

Organizers:
Brandy Armstrong, brandy.armstrong@usm.edu
Kemal Cambazoglu, kemal.cambazoglu@usm.edu
Jerry Wiggert, jerry.wiggert@usm.edu
Travis Miles, tnmiles@marine.rutgers.edu
Courtney Bouchard, courtney.bouchard@noaa.gov

The use of autonomous platforms for both research and operations in coastal oceans has expanded rapidly over the past decade. These applications include monitoring air-sea interactions, marine mammals, ecosystems, sediment resuspension and transport, water quality, ocean acidification, among others. These observational systems are becoming more affordable, modular, capable and ubiquitous. Maritime stakeholders, operational resource management agencies, and researchers from private and public organizations are still seeking more complete and sustained ocean information globally in order to design and support policy options that sustain ocean-related human benefits.

Autonomous systems are increasingly paired with ocean models to expand impact and improve model solutions. New capabilities are being developed to use these model outputs to inform and maximize the information collected by autonomous systems and fill observational gaps. Ocean model solutions can be used to plan for autonomous vehicle deployment, to optimize sampling paths for autonomous vehicles, to enable targeting of features with adaptive sampling methods. The co-development of autonomous observing networks and numerical models is increasingly important in regions and conditions where ship-, buoy-, float-, and satellite measurements are not affordable, feasible, or limited by environmental conditions.

The UN Ocean Decade has identified capacity building as one pathway toward fulfilling coastal ocean data needs. The combination of autonomous ocean observations and numerical models can be leveraged as force multipliers while serving to expand regional observational capacity. We seek to engage coastal autonomous ocean observation and modeling groups, including those interested in developing new collaborations and integrated global approaches. Early career and under-represented groups are encouraged to submit to this session.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade; Ocean Technologies and Observatories

Keywords: Data assimilation, integration and fusion; Ocean observing systems; Hydrodynamic modeling

Co-sponsors: IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society

OM03 Advances in Ocean Data Assimilation, Forecasting, and Reanalysis

Organizers:
Ibrahim Hoteit, ibrahim.hoteit@kaust.edu.sa
Aneesh Subramanian, aneeshcs@colorado.edu
Mohamed Iskandarani, miskandarani@miami.edu
Bruce Cornuelle, bdc@ucsd.edu
Philip Muscarella, philip.muscarella@sri.com

Quantifying and reducing uncertainties in ocean models through data assimilation are essential steps towards accurate oceanic simulations and forecasts. Ocean data assimilation and forecasting products are now widely used in a variety of applications ranging from scientific studies to guiding maritime transportation, planning recreational activities, and supporting hazard and emergency responses. The challenges in this area are numerous due to the involved nonlinear dynamics and interactions at multiple spatio-temporal scales, computational burden, and diverse sources of uncertainties in the models and observations. The goal of this session is to provide a forum for presenting and discussing recent developments in ocean data assimilation and forecasting methodologies, applications, and assessments.
Contributions concerning the following issues are of particular interest:

• Developments of new data assimilation methodologies, including innovative combinations with the emerging fields of Machine Learning, Uncertainty Quantification, and Stochastic Modeling;
• New developments, assessments, and original applications of ocean data assimilation in operational and reanalysis systems;
• Pushing the limits of prediction skill, through stochastic parameterizations and accounting for model errors;
• Coupled data assimilation, including ocean-atmosphere and ocean-biogeochemical systems;
• Assimilation of new datasets, design of observation systems, and observation sensitivity experiments.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Ocean data assimilation and reanalysis; Ocean predictability and prediction; Ocean observing systems; Marine meteorology

OM04 Studying the Ocean with Adjoint Models

Organizers:
Ichiro Fukumori, fukumori@jpl.nasa.gov
Helen Pillar, helen.pillar@utexas.edu
Daniel Jones, dannes@bas.ac.uk

Adjoint models provide computationally efficient means to evaluate sensitivity of modeled quantities with respect to other variables, such as forcing, boundary conditions, parameters, and state. While best known as a tool in data assimilation and state estimation, i.e., adjoint method or 4d-VAR, adjoint models are increasingly employed in other subject areas as well, especially as a tool to investigate the workings of the ocean that can be difficult to conduct otherwise. Examples include sensitivity studies, attribution and identification of causal mechanisms, uncertainty quantification, and observing system design. This session invites submissions of adjoint model applications to studying the ocean so as to explore the widening range of these investigations. Contributions are sought from all disciplines of oceanography as well as studies concerning computational aspects of model adjoints.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Modeling

Keywords: Numerical modeling; Ocean data assimilation and reanalysis; Ocean observing systems; General or miscellaneous

OM05 Seasonal to Centennial Global Coupled Coastal Modeling

Organizers:
LeAnn Conlon, lconlon@lanl.gov
Andrew Roberts, afroberts@lanl.gov
Ali Abdolali, ali.abdolali@noaa.gov

Physical and biogeochemical models of earth systems are often simplified due to the range of simulated scales, relying on parameterizations that may limit model accuracy and that are rarely scale aware. This session highlights the challenges in developing modeling approaches designed to improve simulations of global to coastal hazards and climatic change associated with flooding, erosion, and risks and advantages to infrastructure, shipping, and sovereignty, to enhance our understanding of coastal change and its impact on human activities on various scales from tropical to polar regions, on seasonal to centennial timescales.
We encourage submissions in

1. coupled Earth system model development, with a focus on land-river-ocean-ice-atmosphere interactions in the coastal zone;
2. capturing physics and biogeochemistry across scales, including variable resolution and nested modeling capabilities as well as global to coastal applications;
3. modeling of coupled coastal dynamics, including processes affected by sea-level rise, flooding and inundation, waves, tides, geomorphology, and biogeochemical interactions, on seasonal to centennial timescales;
4. integrated modeling of arctic coastal systems, including wave-ice interaction and landfast ice simulation.

Contributions focusing on lessons learned from past efforts and the path forward in advancing modeling are also welcomed.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; High Latitude Environments; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Coastal processes; Numerical modeling; Hydrodynamic modeling; Ice mechanics and air/sea/ice exchange processes

OM06 Ocean Modeling Supporting and Informing the Decision Making Process for Resilience, Navigation, and the Blue Economy

Organizers:
Julianna Thomas, jothomas@ucsd.edu
Saeed Moghimi, saeed.moghimi@noaa.gov
Raleigh Hood, rhood@umces.edu
Edward Myers, edward.myers@noaa.gov
Neil Weston, neil.d.weston@noaa.gov

The coastal and ocean modeling communities conduct a wide range of research to broaden scientific knowledge and increase model predictability on existing and emerging coastal, ecologic and hydrologic issues we face today. Modeling frameworks are being developed and employed to generate products to support resilient communities and to promote coastal economies. In this session we will bring ocean modeling experts and stakeholders of the modeling products together to highlight partnerships and collaborations in the development of predictive coastal zone models. We hope to create an opportunity to explore how the ocean modeling community would be able to support resilience, navigation and, the Blue Economy which encompasses the economic, social and ecological sustainability of the coastal regions and of the oceans. We specifically encourage oral and poster presentations on:

• Coastal ocean modeling products supporting precision navigation
• Coastal ocean modeling for disaster mitigation and its benefit to communities for the coastal economy, environment and safety.
• Coastal modeling for water quality and pollution transport and its impacts on downstream industries (e.g., tourism and fisheries)
• Coastal modeling products supporting living resource management (e.g., fisheries, seagrasses and marshes)

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Fish and Fisheries; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Climate dynamics; Hydrodynamic modeling

OM07 Advances in Computational Oceanography

Organizers:
Mark Petersen, mpetersen@lanl.gov
Sara Calandrini, scalandrini@lanl.gov

Numerical modeling plays an indispensable role in modern-day oceanographic investigations. The number of numerical codes and approaches that is available to address oceanographic problems is ever increasing, and so is their complexity. In particular the push towards mesoscale and submesoscale resolving resolutions brings about new challenges. At the same time, new supercomputing architectures are pushing towards exascale computations.

For this session we invite contributions that address any aspect of computational oceanography. Potential topics of interest are: new codes and parameterizations; new approaches to spatial discretizations, time stepping, analysis, and visualization; ocean modeling tools and applications for new architectures; and cutting edge, high-resolution simulations.

Keywords: Numerical modeling; General circulation

Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy

Submssion to Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy sessions do not count against the one abstract per submitter rule.

OP04 Marine Renewable Energy: Resource Characterization, Bio-physical interactions, and Societal Impacts

Organizers:
Simon Neill, s.p.neill@bangor.ac.uk
M Reza Hashemi, reza_hashemi@uri.edu
Craig Jones, cjones@integral-corp.com
Zhaoqing Yang, Zhaoqing.Yang@pnnl.gov

The ocean represents a vast and largely untapped resource, which is being explored as a source of low carbon renewable energy. There is much research within the ocean science community into resource characterization and the interaction of energy conversion technologies with the ocean environment. We seek contributions spanning a broad range of topics relating to marine renewable energy, including offshore wind, wave, ocean current and tidal resources over timescales ranging from semi-diurnal to decadal, and feedbacks between the resource and energy extraction at both device and array scale. The session also seeks discussions on the application of ocean energy for ocean instrumentation/observation, powering off-grid buoys, unpiloted surface and underwater vehicles, and desalination. This session will gather and relate research methods and results from investigations into field techniques, and numerical/statistical modeling used to assess interactions of marine renewable energy with ocean processes. The session will also include studies of physical impacts (e.g., impacts on sedimentary systems), and societal interactions (e.g., marine spatial planning). We also invite innovative research on ocean energy arrays/sites for co-located applications (e.g., offshore wind combined with aquaculture) that would benefit from combined infrastructure and reduced levelized costs.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Descriptive and regional oceanography; Numerical modeling

OP06 ADVANCING THE BLUE ECONOMY FOLLOWING SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES

Organizers:
Erick García, egarcia@bluetidepr.org
Christelle Garcia, cgarcia@bluetidepr.org

The Earth’s Oceans play a crucial role in global economy industries, such as fishing, research, transportation, tourism, and trade. However, our ocean is already under stress from overexploitation, pollution, declining biodiversity, and climate change. Moreover, the United Nations (UN) projected the world’s population to be at least 9 billion by 2050 (according to the 2019 UN report), consequently increasing the demand for natural resources. These pressures highlight the need for innovation and research to enhance the Blue Economy sustainably. In 2010, The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimated the ocean’s economic activities at US$1.5 trillion, and the projection is that it will more than double by 2030. Some emerging industries that could potentially outperform the growth of the global economy and drive a new ocean (marine)-based sustainable economy are aquaculture, mariculture, ocean observing, energy generation, and sustainable fishing practices.

A collaboration between multidisciplinary groups in ocean science, technology, innovation, and policy should be fostered to respond effectively to the challenges associated with these intense pressures/stressors and the fast-paced growth of emerging industries. Such collaboration could help spur a sustainable ocean economy strategy that uses ocean resources in ways that preserve a healthy, productive, and resilient ocean, as well as preserve our natural ecosystems, and improve food security.

We invite submitters exploring the role of science, technology, and innovation to develop sound ocean management strategies and increase the sustainability of the ocean economy while harnessing its benefit. We welcome abstracts describing ocean observations (both remotely sensed and in-situ), numerical and laboratory modeling, theoretical analysis, and innovative technologies. Ideas and concepts that could be applied in the Caribbean region are especially encouraged to apply.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy; Ocean Technologies and Observatories

Keywords: Instruments and techniques; Oceans; General or miscellaneous; New fields

For More Information: https://www.theblueeconomy.org

OP07 United States Contributions to Global Ocean Plastic

Organizers:
Megan May, mmay@nas.edu
Mary Donohue, donohuem@hawaii.edu
Jenna Jambeck, jjambeck@uga.edu
Margaret Spring, mspring@mbayaq.org
Rashid Sumailia, r.sumaila@oceans.ubc.ca

This scientific session will engage participants by convening the ocean sciences community and ocean plastics scholars on our complex and dependent modern relationship with plastics. The session will explore scenarios towards a more sustainable future with environmental plastics from a watershed perspective, addressing upstream, coastal, and ocean compartments by sharing results of a recent report, hearing from the latest science and policy researchers, and learning from practitioners who have successfully worked to reduce ocean plastics.

The session will include speakers to summarize the November 2021 United States National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Mathematics (NASEM) report focused on global ocean plastic. This report will provide a high level overview of United States contributions to plastics in aquatic environments.

Because research on plastics is moving forward at a stunning rate, it is difficult for even experts to remain abreast of the state of the science. This session will also include talks on plastics science and policy, prioritizing recent developments.

In the interest of illustrating the positive progress being made on plastics, the last component of this session is an opportunity for participants to share effective monitoring and tracking strategies to manage ocean plastics. We welcome submissions from community-based projects, innovative technology, or other ways that have worked to reduce ocean plastics in the United States. We plan to use this section of the session to spur action, identify options for reducing plastic waste, and inspire progress towards solving this major problem.

This session format will encourage engagement of a broad spectrum of ocean scientists at various career stages, and facilitate networking amongst community members to work towards solutions to the ocean plastics problem.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Education & Outreach; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade

Keywords: Remote sensing; Marine pollution; Science policy; Legislation and regulations

For More Information: https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/united-states-contributions-to-global-ocean-plastic-waste

OP08 Working together for a sustainable future: bridging the gap between science and policy

Organizers:
Sara Mynott, saramynott@uvic.ca
Kerri Dobson, Dobson.77@osu.edu

The ocean is a shared source of renewable energy, a global contributor to food security and an integral part of wellbeing, worldwide. As such, the ocean requires joint stewardship to ensure its health – and ours – long into the future. The increasing pressures on the marine environment associated with climate change, resource extraction, marine pollution, and offshore development makes such stewardship all the more urgent. However, many gaps surround how to best integrate different needs, disciplines, and our understanding of the science in order to enable better, collective decision making. To protect the marine environment for future generations, collaboration and trans-disciplinary work at regional, national, and international scales is essential – and must be optimised to ensure the best outcomes for the environment and society.

How to enable effective transdisciplinary work, particularly in a marine policy context, is an ongoing and active area of research. From using knowledge brokers to facilitate information exchange, communication and collaboration, to embedding scientists within policy organisations to enable rapid evidence uptake and use, diverse approaches are being employed to facilitate science-policy collaboration. This session will share learnings from around the globe, drawing on best practice examples to leverage a greater understanding about how to integrate research, decision making, and other disciplines in support of effective marine policy. We particularly welcome case studies of success, accounts of challenges experienced, and lessons learned from ongoing initiatives at the science-policy interface.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade

Keywords: Science policy

OP09 National Priorities for Ocean Exploration and Characterization within the US EEZ

Organizers:
Rachel Medley, Rachel.Medley@noaa.gov
Mark Mueller, mark.mueller@boem.gov
Amanda Demopoulos, ademopoulos@usgs.gov
Caitlin Adams, caitlin.adams@noaa.gov

The National Ocean Mapping Exploration and Characterization (NOMEC) Strategy seeks to coordinate, leverage, and accelerate partnerships, activities, and technologies that advance ocean mapping, exploration, and characterization throughout the United States Exclusive Economic Zone (U.S. EEZ). The newly established Interagency Working Group on Ocean Exploration and Characterization (IWG-OEC) identified key strategic priorities—both thematic and geographic—for ocean exploration and characterization. Subject matter experts representing 16 federal agencies identified their highest priorities for U.S. EEZ exploration and characterization in each of the following sub-disciplines: marine resources, water column, benthic ecology, seafloor hazards, and underwater cultural heritage. Multiple subgroups prioritized the geographic regions of the Aleutian Arc, Cascadia Subduction Zone, Blake Plateau, and Northeast Caribbean for exploration and characterization. The selected national strategic priority areas addressed mission needs of multiple federal agencies, including areas with: potential economic resources such as offshore energy, critical minerals, aquaculture, and/or biopharmaceuticals; notable archaeological/cultural heritage sites; natural hazards that posed risks to public safety; features directly managed by federal agencies such as Essential Fish Habitat and National Marine Sanctuaries; and unique ecosystems expected to provide insights into important ocean and Earth systems. For this session, we seek expanded input and new ideas by encouraging abstracts from non-federal sectors (States, Tribes, academia, philanthropy, industry, and other NGOs) with interest and focus on advancing ocean exploration and characterization needs and objectives (as identified in the NOMEC Strategy and Implementation Plan) through collaborative activities and technology development--particularly those in deep waters (>200m) of the U.S. EEZ.

Cross listed Tracks: Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; Fish and Fisheries; High Latitude Environments; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: General or miscellaneous; Regional planning; Science policy; Project evaluation

For More Information: https://oeab.noaa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/2021-national-strategy-implementation.pdf

OP10 Informing Adaptive Management: Regional Vulnerability Assessments for Ocean Acidification

Organizers:
Erica Ombres, erica.h.ombres@noaa.gov
Courtney Cochran, courtney.cochran@noaa.gov

This session will highlight talks that synthesize information at a regional, state or local scale to assess where societal vulnerabilities to ocean acidification (OA) exist or are emerging. Understanding the cultural and socioeconomic consequences of OA is important for developing effective management alternatives and increasing community resilience. These assessments will inform local, state, and national marine resource decision makers of potential impacts of OA on ecosystem services, economically valuable species, and human communities, and equip them with actionable information for improving management strategies. Coastal community vulnerability is driven by the local exposure of the marine ecosystem to OA in addition to sensitivity and adaptive capacity; understanding this requires the synthesis of disparate types of data (chemical, biological, ecological and social), as well as multi-disciplinary OA science tailored to support decision-making needs. These vulnerability assessments and data synthesis efforts provide information to support adaptation planning for areas such as habitat, species, and ecosystem protection and restoration; fisheries management and other extractive uses of coastal and marine resources; traditional and cultural uses of coastal and marine resources and environments; and coastal community planning for mitigation, resilience, and adaptation. Talks should highlight recent results in this area and identify gaps in knowledge or other challenges to understanding future social vulnerability.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade

Keywords: Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling; Regional planning; Techniques applicable in three or more fields

Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade

OS02 Integrated, long-term ocean observations support a sustainable future through adaptive ecosystem-based management

Organizers:
Erin Satterthwaite, esatterthwaite@ucsd.edu
Steven Bograd, steven.bograd@noaa.gov
Sanae Chiba, chibas@jamstec.go.jp
Jameal Samhouri, jameal.samhouri@noaa.gov

Human activities and changes in climate are affecting ocean ecosystems and human well-being. Managing these complex social-ecological systems requires an adaptive, holistic, integrated approach. Such an approach to management within complex systems relies on ongoing monitoring, assessment, and data synthesis that helps to better understand and refine future management decisions in an ongoing, iterative process. In this session we will explore how integrated ocean observations support ecosystem-based management in different sectors, such as for sustainable fisheries and renewable energy. We will also explore new and improved methods for timely, openly available, and data-driven ocean ecosystem assessment and management. This session will bring together key people from government, business, academia and civil society across the spectrum of ocean-related human activities to share how long-term ocean observations support ecosystem based, integrated ocean management.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Fish and Fisheries; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Impacts of global change; Data assimilation, integration and fusion; Decision making under uncertainty; Science policy

OS03 Successes and challenges in restoring marine foundation species

Organizers:
Rachel Smith, rssmith218@gmail.com
Max Castorani, castorani@virginia.edu

Restoration of marine habitats promises to reverse decades of environmental degradation and return lost ecosystem functions. In marine habitats, restoration often targets foundation species because these habitat-forming species – including seagrasses, salt marsh plants, mangroves, oysters, corals, kelps, and deep-sea sponges – provide the underlying structure of entire ecosystems and their return can support the cascading recovery of other ecosystem functions. Although restoration of marine foundation species has increased exponentially over the past few decades, restoration science is a relatively new field and restoration outcomes are often mixed. As the UN Decade of Restoration draws additional attention and investment to restoring marine foundation species, we invite presentations that address the successes and challenges of restoring marine foundation species to help inform future efforts to restore marine ecosystems.

Cross listed Tracks: Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade

Keywords: Population dynamics and ecology

OS05 Indigenous Connections to Water: The Importance of Sustainable Water Resources, Inclusive Practices, and Honoring Pilina

Organizers:
Wendy Smythe, wsmythe@d.umn.edu
Aradhna Tripati, atripati@g.ucla.edu
Catalina Martinez, catalina.martinez@noaa.gov

Indigenous Knowledge systems and the connection of Indigenous peoples to water is often overlooked in ocean science research and in policy decisions, especially when economic drivers are impacted. Dismissal of these knowledges has resulted in detrimental global impacts to all life on Earth due to resource exploitation and non-sustainable development, yet it is the primary knowledge base utilized today in both training for marine scientists and conservation and restoration efforts. Indigenous knowledge bases have guided people, communities, and societies in their innumerable interactions with their surrounding environment but have been heavily impacted by the brutal and colonial history of Western STEM. This session focuses on supporting, elevating, and celebrating Indigenous peoples, their knowledge, and acknowledging their relationship with water and will highlight sustainable and inclusive practices across ecosystems. Here we will discuss Indigenous STEM, observations, knowledge and practices across multiple communities and cultures, across generations, practices that are renewed and tested through successive generations, across several thousands of years, and will engage in cross-cultural knowledge exchange between communities and information about sustainability in the face of environmental change. It is imperative, given climate change impacts on the oceans and coasts, that we support Indigenous marine and caretakers, and the opportunities for cultural exchange to develop more effective practice.

Cross listed Tracks: Education & Outreach; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy

Keywords: Diversity; Impacts of global change; Oceans; General or miscellaneous

OS07 Environmental indicators of plastic pollution in the North Pacific

Organizers:
Matthew Savoca, msavoca13@gmail.com
ChengJun Sun, csun@fio.org.cn
Won Joon Shim, wjshim@kiost.ac.kr
Patrick O’Hara, patrick.ohara@canada.ca

Small fragments of plastic debris – known as meso- and microplastics – are pervasive in marine systems. The North Pacific is among the most polluted oceanic regions worldwide in regard to synthetic debris. Sampling a vast and varied system for debris is challenging; therefore, having environmental indicators of plastic debris is critical to assess the status and trends of plastic pollution in addition to predicting ecosystem risk and quantifying potential impacts. This session will identify and discuss potential organismal and non-organismal (e.g., sediments) indicators of small synthetic material in the North Pacific and its marginal seas. Presenters may also focus on indirect indicators of plastic pollution, such as plastic additives leading to chemical contamination in organismal tissues. A deeper understanding of these marine debris sentinels will help us elucidate the status and trends of small plastic pollution and associated environmental impacts in the North Pacific, thus allowing us to make informed decisions for plastic usage and litter management policies in the region and elsewhere. This information will be vital to achieve the clean ocean called for under the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030).

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade

Keywords: Oceans; Pacific Ocean

Co-sponsors: PICES

OS09 Oceans of Conflict and Climate Change: In Search of Pathways for Sustainable and Equitable Oceans and Coasts

Organizers:
Michael Gilek, michael.gilek@sh.se
Ivana Lukic, il@sustainable-projects.eu

Ocean sustainability is foundational for life on earth. Despite its immensity, the health and sustainability of the ocean is now in peril. Drivers include a cocktail of anthropogenic climate change, ocean acidification, pollution and degradation of marine ecosystems, and over-exploitation of coastal and marine resources. The ocean is also awash in long-standing as well as emerging conflict between activities like fisheries, marine conservation, coastal tourism and deep-sea oil and gas mining that can thwart efforts to realize the Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Despite the proliferation of laudable coastal and ocean governance endeavours, environmentally unsustainable ocean practices are intensifying alongside deepening ocean-related poverty, inequity, injustice and human rights abuses.

Because of the complexity of the challenge, there is a need for integrated, interdisciplinary and cross sectoral approaches, bringing together various scientific disciplines, as well as policymakers, resource managers, industries, civil society, citizens and other societal partners. The research community will need to integrate models, observations and experiments, with qualitative, participatory and action-oriented research approaches to generate the knowledge required to map and co-produce pathways towards sustainable and equitable oceans and coasts.

This session aims to provide an interdisciplinary arena for presenting and discussing research insights and challenges linked to the complex challenges of ocean and coastal sustainability and equity. The session is based on a core set of presentations the international research projects of Belmont Forum’s ongoing Collaborative Research Agenda on Transdisciplinary Research for Ocean Sustainability. The session chairs have assembled a list of 12 suggested presentation on a wide set of relevant topics by presenters from Sweden, USA, Germany, Brazil, Japan and France.

Cross listed Tracks: Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade

Keywords: Institutions; Science policy; Regional planning

For More Information: https://www.belmontforum.org/projects/?fwp_project_call=oceans2018

OS10 Marine Litter and Microplastic Monitoring and Understanding

Organizers:
RENE GARELLO, rene.garello@orange.fr
Mishra Pravakar, mishra@nccr.gov.in
Audrey Hasson, ahasson@geoblueplanet.org
Bhavani Narayanswami, Bhavani.Narayanaswamy@sams.ac.uk

Marine litter is of growing global concern and is a multi-dimensional problem with economic, environmental, cultural, and human health costs. While quantitative information on production and use of plastics is to a large extent available, the fate of plastics discarded or leaked into the environment is highly uncertain. In particular, knowledge of how much plastic at different scales down to micro and nano levels reaches the ocean and the trajectories of the plastic in the ocean remain poorly known.

In order to address these issues, we will propose a progamme based on the following main topics:

• Environmental implications of single use of plastics and challenges and constraints involved region wise in containing the mismanaged plastic pollution and if they can be standardized.
• Inclusion of best practices based on social, cultural and economic aspects that can improve the waste management on landside and in the offshore region.
• Public participation and awareness in management of plastic consumption and disposal, and approaches to enable behavior changes in the society as well as manufacturers and industry and their response to phase out single use plastics.
• Determination of a strategy for monitoring marine litter in the ocean: need to identify marine litter and assess marine litter observation and detection methods; coupling between observations and ocean circulation models.
• Detailed understanding on the monitoring and quantifications of marine litter viz., meso, micro and nano-plastics, their pathways, distribution and transport processes from land to the ocean by sharing the methodology, data on plastic leakage to the marine environment.
• Development of monitoring platforms: there is a wide range of non-comparable monitoring approaches that limits the development of indicators and spatial or temporal assessments.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: General or miscellaneous

Co-sponsors: IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society

OS11 Observing and Predicting the Global Coastal Ocean

Organizers:
Emma Heslop, e.heslop@unesco.org
Brandy Armstrong, brandy.armstrong@usm.edu
João De Souza, J.DeSouza@metocean.co.nz
Paul di Giacomo, paul.digiacomo@noaa.gov

Most human interaction with the ocean happens in the coastal zone. Responding to climate change, and effective management of coastal resources will require the development of a modern, agile, knowledge and information infrastructure that includes effective ocean observing systems, tailored models and information services, and fostering the use of standards and best practices.

Major challenges include enhanced ocean observations at regional and local scale, extending the existing regional observing capabilities and linking to GOOS. Similarly, downscaled regional models should include physical processes not represented in the global simulations, and better resolve the continental shelf bathymetry and geometry. New in situ and satellite data and new data assimilation schemes are needed to constrain model solutions, improving reliability and regional reanalysis with better optimised initial conditions for operational forecasts. Existing ocean observing technologies will likely not be sufficient; new instrumentation and measurement approaches will also be required.

This session is aligned with the CoastPredict initiative, that focuses on common ocean features, to produce predictions of natural variability and human-induced change in coastal areas, and upgrading the infrastructure for exchange of data with standard protocols.

To create a forum for discussion around building integrated observing and modelling solutions in the coastal zone, supporting the Ocean Decade outcomes, we invite abstracts in areas such as:

• Integration of observations and modelling for service delivery
• Building a trusted information infrastructure in the coastal ocean
• New techniques that increase predictability from events to climate;
• Innovative approaches and methodologies for coastal ocean observation;
• Studies of global coastal ocean multi-scale interactions, and land-shelf-atmosphere-open ocean connections;
• Interaction and uptake of traditional knowledge for ocean management.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Technologies and Observatories

Keywords: Real-time and responsive information delivery; Coastal processes; Ocean observing systems; Ocean predictability and prediction

For More Information: https://www.coastpredict.org

Co-sponsors: IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society

OS13 Ocean Salinity in Support of Scientific and Environmental Demands

Organizers:
Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, nadya@nasa.gov
Kyla Drushka, kdrushka@apl.uw.edu
Severine Fournier, severine.fournier@jpl.nasa.gov
Atsushi Matsuoka, atsushi.matsuoka@unh.edu

The session welcomes contributions highlighting the importance of salinity in Earth science studies and environmental applications, including those addressing the goals and programs of the UN Decade of Ocean Science and Sustainable Development. Potential topics include the role of salinity in enhancing our knowledge of Earth system interaction; linkages between the ocean, atmosphere, cryosphere, and land, including hydrological and biogeochemical cycles; ocean circulation; and climate variability and predictability including constraining cryospheric changes using salinity information. We invite a broad range of studies that utilize the current salinity observing system consisting of in situ and satellite platforms, as well estimates from data assimilation products and climate model projections. The joint use of salinity and other physical, biological, and chemical variables that stimulate the collaboration between different communities is appreciated. Studies highlighting the utility of salinity measurements in environmental assessments, operational oceanography and forecasts, and the development of science-informed decisions are particularly encouraged.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Oceans; Climate variability; Air/sea interactions; Upper ocean and mixed layer processes

For More Information: https://salinity.oceansciences.org/

OS14 Observing Air-Sea Interactions Strategy (OASIS) Ocean Shots for 2030

Organizers:
Meghan Cronin, Meghan.F.Cronin@noaa.gov
Sebastiaan Swart, sebastiaan.swart@marine.gu.se
Brian Arbic, arbic@umich.edu
Samantha Wills, Samantha.M.Wills@noaa.gov

Air-sea exchanges of energy, moisture, and gases affect the Earth’s weather and climate, influencing life, including our own. The ocean covers over 70% of the Earth and air-sea interactions fuel the hydrological cycle, affecting global weather and precipitation. Air-sea interactions affect the distribution of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and ocean; how seawater flows, winds blow and water mixes; how much food the surface ocean can produce; and how pollutants move through the ocean – information critical to policymakers, industry, and civil society. Yet, air-sea interactions are poorly sampled. There are no dedicated satellite missions for air-sea exchange and in situ observations are sparse. As an endorsed UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development programme, the Observing Air-Sea Interactions Strategy (OASIS) hopes to produce transformative observational-based knowledge to fundamentally improve weather, climate and ocean prediction, promote healthy oceans, the blue economy, and sustainable food and energy.

This Session will welcome both virtual and In-Person presentations for a mix of oral, 10-4x5-30 (10-minute keynote + four 5-minute talks + 30-minute Q/A), e-lightning, and poster presentation blocks. Submissions should address the following OASIS questions:

• What are the physical, biogeochemical, and ecological air-sea interaction processes that should be included in the OASIS? How well are these processes resolved or parameterized in models?
• How interoperable are the different remotely-sensed and in situ observations? How do models compare to these observations? What are best practices for ensuring interoperability?
• What OASIS "Ocean Shots" would make a sea-change in observing, modeling and predicting air-sea interactions over the coming decade?
• How can OASIS become truly global through capacity building and sharing? This block will highlight potential OASIS Partners in under-resourced developing and island nations.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Ocean observing systems; Marine meteorology; Air/sea interactions; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling

For More Information: https://airseaobs.org/

OS15 Coastlines and People (CoPe)

Organizers:
Manda Adams, amadams@nsf.gov
Lisa Clough, lclough@nsf.gov
Stacy Aguilera-Peterson, saguiler@nsf.gov
Mete Uz, bmuz@nsf.gov

With 40% of the world's population living within 100 kilometers of the coast, sustainable coastal ecosystems are critical to supporting people’s livelihoods, health, and safety. Understanding the risks associated with coastal hazards requires a holistic Earth Systems approach that integrates improved understanding of and, where possible, predictions about natural, social, and technological processes with efforts to increase the resilience of coastal systems. Many of the communities that are vulnerable to natural hazards and environmental change in coastal areas include populations that have historically not been included in STEM fields or in the development of STEM research. The National Science Foundation (NSF) has invested in research on Coastlines and People (CoPe) with the aim of supporting diverse, innovative, multi-institution awards that are focused on critically important coastlines and people research that is integrated with broadening participation goals. CoPe presents an opportunity to enhance representation of the communities most impacted by coastal hazards in the research programs that study coastal variability, hazards, and adaptation and to engage diverse stakeholders in a meaningful way that will benefit individuals, communities, society, and the advancement of STEM. The Ocean Decade aims to transform how ocean science is conducted and used. The CoPe approach to apply convergent thinking and to fully integrate human dimensions into the science is the type of aspirational framework for the global community to embrace during the Decade. While CoPe efforts likely fulfill each of the Decade’s seven outcomes, CoPe in particular aims to achieve a predicted (4), safe (5), and inspiring and engaging (7) ocean. This session welcomes presentations from groups funded by the NSF CoPe program, as well as other researchers working on coastlines and people research that integrates broadening participation and/or stakeholder engagement into the research.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Education & Outreach; High Latitude Environments; Islands and Reefs; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Diversity; Earth system modeling; Coastal processes

OS16 Transdisciplinary and transnational research and collaborations to support ocean sustainability

Organizers:
Vanessa Vargas-Nguyen, vvargas@umces.edu
William Dennison, dennison@umces.edu

As changes in climate, population, pollution, and consumption patterns place coastal and ocean systems at increasing risk at a global scale, there is a need to: i) effectively assess the state of coastal and ocean systems, ii) identify what interconnected actions can be taken to improve the social, economic and ecosystem health of these systems, and iii) identify which actors within the system are best placed to implement these actions. These challenges in ocean sustainability and developing community resilience can be addressed through transdisciplinary and transnational research and collaborations. Emphasis on co-design of research, and co-production of knowledge creates opportunities to connect and engage with stakeholders to address the gaps between science, society, policy, and practice. The value of an international team working together using the transdisciplinary approach of incorporating natural with social science and engaging with stakeholders can lead to the co-development of transformative solutions that will have global applicability. In this session, we encourage submissions that focus on regional and global ocean research initiatives; the benefits, challenges and lessons learned; and its societal impacts and how they were evaluated. The goal of this session is to improve our knowledge and understanding of transdisciplinary and transnational research and how it can be effectively used to support and advance the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Education & Outreach; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade

Keywords: Impacts of global change; International collaboration; Community modeling frameworks; System operation and management

OS17 Syncing Silos: Bridging Scientific Divides in Government to Improve Responsible Stewardship of Ocean Resources

Organizers:
Laura Mansfield, laura.mansfield@boem.gov
Stephanie Sharuga, stephanie.sharuga@boem.gov
Colin Hawes, cahawes@vims.edu

Complex marine and coastal environmental challenges require a collaborative approach to fully achieve government’s stewardship and conservation responsibilities. Merging the environmental, social, and economic sciences towards common goals is critical for efficiently and effectively protecting the natural and human environments and resources they rely on. This session aims to foster a discussion about the challenges and possible solutions for using cross-disciplinary and inclusive approaches to natural resource management decisions. With a focus on how to better connect the environmental and social sciences, this session will offer an opportunity to explore needs, approaches, and best practices for engaging with diverse stakeholders to strengthen science-based information for government actions. Discussion on how government stewardship decisions can address environmental justice issues and community needs, especially considering people that may be disproportionately impacted by natural and anthropogenic changes, is also highly encouraged. Presentations may include descriptions of needs, projects, programs, outreach and engagement activities, or other initiatives that explore how collaboration in the sciences can improve stewardship of the ocean’s resources. This session encourages participation by members of all levels of government, academia, organizations working on behalf of the government, and those working collaboratively with the government.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; Education & Outreach; Fish and Fisheries; High Latitude Environments; Islands and Reefs; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: General or miscellaneous; New fields

OS20 Linking the mesoscale circulation, geochemistry, and ecology of the Gulf of Mexico

Organizers:
Juan Carlos Herguera, herguera@cicese.mx
Paula Perez Brunius, brunius@cicese.mx
Sharon Herzka, sherzka@cicese.mx

The Gulf of Mexico is a marginal sea strongly influenced by energetic mesoscale processes partly controlled by the Loop Current dynamics, and a marked seasonal cycle oscillating between cool and dry and warm and wet extremes. The gulf supports a broad range of oceanographic environments, including migrating and semipermanent eddies, eutrophic coastal systems, oligotrophic open ocean waters, shelf waters that are susceptible to frequent harmful algal blooms and localized suboxic events.

We invite contributions that characterize the variability and links between the biology, geochemistry, and physical processes of the Gulf of Mexico. Suggested contributions may include but are not limited to descriptions of water column and benthic geochemical distributions and fluxes; biogeochemical measurements; results from molecular approaches, and examination of the links between physical, biogeochemical and ecological dynamics of the water column and sediments. We encourage the submission of multidisciplinary studies of the importance of mesoscale processes on the biogeochemistry, ecology, transport and mixing processes in the Gulf of Mexico, including contrasts of dominant processes throughout its waters. The session aims to highlight new results, identify areas of common interest, collaborative opportunities, that will contribute to sustainable management and conservation strategies.

Cross listed Tracks: Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade

Keywords: Marginal and semi-enclosed seas

Ocean Technologies and Observatories

OT01 Connecting ocean science, conservation and management needs and solutions through emerging technologies and approaches

Organizers:
Camille Pagniello, cpagniel@ucsd.edu
Jack Butler, jbutler@fiu.edu
Katherine Wilson, katherine.wilson@noaa.gov
Noelle Yochum, noelle.yochum@noaa.gov

The ocean is vast and dynamic, making it difficult for scientists and management practitioners alike to monitor their conservation or restoration efforts. Despite the current rapid, global advancements in technology, its application to ocean science, conservation and management has been slow and often expensive. Integrating pre-existing, off-the-shelf instruments for ocean applications is often rife with challenges, including adapting them for harsh environments, upscaling the methods and platforms to cover large spatiotemporal scales and handle big data, and incorporating the diverse data outputs into integrated management decisions. The proliferation of novel applications of off-the-shelf technology and machine learning approaches could address these challenges and others associated with monitoring marine species and ecosystems.

We invite presentations from marine scientists, engineers, conservation practitioners, resource managers and policymakers that highlight current technology needs, existing or emerging solutions and/or promising ideas for integrating emerging approaches and technologies into ocean conservation and management efforts. Presentations on current needs should provide a synoptic overview of technology-based approaches and identify gaps in a specific area of ocean science, conservation and management. We strongly encourage presentations on existing or emerging solutions to be in the form of short tutorials that demonstrate the use and application of the tool. Poster presenters will be provided the opportunity during the oral session to give a lightning talk to introduce their poster. A Slack workspace will be created to enable participants to interact and ask questions remotely during and after the conference.

This session will bring people together from diverse backgrounds and sectors to identify what we need, how people are filling the technology gap, and how we go about having more innovation in ocean science, conservation and management.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; Fish and Fisheries; High Latitude Environments; Islands and Reefs; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade; Ocean Technologies and Observatories

Keywords: Instruments and techniques; Machine learning; Instruments, sensors, techniques; Science policy

OT02 Ushering in a new era of hyperspectral and polarimetric radiometry for remote sensing of global ocean ecosystems

Organizers:
Jeremy Werdell, jeremy.werdell@nasa.gov
Ivona Cetinic, ivona.cetinic@nasa.gov
Lachlan McKinna, lachlan.mckinna@go2q.com.au
Heidi Dierssen, heidi.dierssen@uconn.edu

NASA will launch the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission in late 2023,. PACE is an up and coming multi-instrument observatory that, thanks to a unique combination of hyperspectral radiometry and multispectral, multi-angle polarimetry, will provide an unprecedented view of the global ocean and the atmosphere above it. In this session we invite ideas that break the current limits of existing passive remote sensing approaches for monitoring aquatic ecosystems, in particular exploration of topics such as: ecosystem dynamics, the carbon cycle, coastal processes, marine aerosols, ocean-atmosphere interactions, climate-driven trends, and intersections of basic and applied science. We welcome research that challenges existing paradigms in our understanding of the capabilities of the remote sensing observation of the global ocean, particularly with a broad eye on the use of hyperspectral ocean color and multi-angle polarimetric observations. Synergies between PACE and other remote sensing technologies (UAV, AUV, air- and space-borne), ocean observing systems, process experiments, and biogeochemical models, are also invited.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; Fish and Fisheries; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Phytoplankton; Instruments, sensors, and techniques; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling; Instruments useful in three or more fields

For More Information: https://pace.gsfc.nasa.gov/

OT03 Towards best practices for using imaging systems for plankton monitoring

Organizers:
Hongsheng Bi, hbi@umces.edu
David Kimmel, david.kimmel@noaa.gov
Julie Keister, jkeister@uw.edu
Haiyong Zheng, zhenghaiyong@ouc.edu.cn
xuemin Cheng, chengxm@sz.tsinghua.edu.cn

Plankton are the base of marine food webs, and so are essential for sustaining fisheries, seabirds, and marine mammals. Plankton are also ideal indicators of changes in hydro-climatic forces and ecosystem status because they are typically short-lived and respond quickly to environmental changes. Traditional plankton monitoring programs often involve field sampling and sample processing techniques that are high cost, time consuming, and labor intensive. These limitations restrict the potential to use planktonic communities as indicators of environmental change. However, recent developments in plankton imaging systems and machine algorithms provide a unique opportunity to move plankton monitoring programs from net-based techniques to either fully imaging-based or a hybrid of net-based and imaging-based plankton monitoring approaches

There is little doubt that imaging systems are useful and powerful tools in plankton monitoring, because of significant progress in the development of imaging systems and deployment platforms including profiling floats, autonomous surface vehicles, and underwater autonomous vehicles. However, it is important to understand the strength and limitations of the imaging systems that are currently available for plankton monitoring, and a need to develop broadly applicable taxonomic identification algorithms, in order to continue to make significant advances in the field. We propose a special session during the 2022 Ocean Science conference to summarize the strengths, limitations, and recent progress of imaging systems and deployment platforms. Our session seeks to contributions that highlight the utilization of different imaging techniques, automated plankton recognition and enumerating procedures, and sampling protocols that are routinely applicable to monitor plankton using imaging systems. Our goal is to share state-of-the-art science that serves to facilitate the deployment of imaging systems for plankton monitoring worldwide.

Cross listed Tracks: Fish and Fisheries; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Technologies and Observatories

Keywords: Instruments, sensors, and techniques; Zooplankton; Phytoplankton

For More Information: https://meetings.pices.int/members/working-groups/wg48

OT04 Leveraging Existing Marine Platforms for Ocean Observing: Engaging Commercial and Professional Sectors on Local, Regional, and Global Scales

Organizers:
Julie Jakoboski, julie.jakoboski@gmail.com
Cooper Van Vranken, cooper@berringdatacollective.com
Paul Holthus, paul.holthus@oceancouncil.org
Martin Kramp, mkramp@ocean-ops.org

Traditionally, ocean observations have been obtained via deployed instruments or via research vessels. While effective, these techniques require dedicated resources for ocean observing purposes. However, various commercial and professional sectors are based in the marine environment, providing an opportunity to leverage existing commercial platforms to obtain ocean observations in regions where observations are currently sparse in space and/or time. By partnering with commercial and professional sectors, such as shipping, fishing, offshore energy, tourism/transportation, mining and ocean racing, a range of ocean sensors can be installed and deployed on existing platforms during normal operations, returning observations in near real-time. New end-to-end systems are being developed to obtain, transmit, and process in-situ measurements, which are then used by a wide range of ocean stakeholders. Resulting processed observations, derived products, and research findings are returned to the commercial sector, benefiting both commercial users and science research communities while supporting a blue economy and providing an opportunity for outreach to the broader public.

The session will focus on new and existing ocean observing systems that utilize commercial or professional marine infrastructure as ocean observing platforms. Abstracts are welcome that address sensor technologies, data pathway/archival solutions, challenges and benefits of commercial-platform-based ocean observing systems, obtaining observations for research and modeling purposes from existing commercial platforms, how these systems support a blue economy and/or lead to more sustainable commercial sectors, the full sensor-to-benefit system, and how commercial platforms as ocean observatories can benefit marine research and/or operational oceanography and coupled met-ocean systems as a whole.

Cross listed Tracks: Education & Outreach; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade; Ocean Technologies and Observatories

Keywords: International collaboration; Ocean observing systems; Instruments, sensors, techniques; System design

OT05 Uncrewed Surface Vehicles (USVs). Technology Trends and Improvements on Observing Applications for the Ocean Decade

Organizers:
Carlos Barrera, carlos.barrera@plocan.eu
Andy Chiodi, andy.chiodi@noaa.gov
Christoph Waldmann, waldmann@marum.de
Joao Tasso, jtasso@fe.up.pt

Autonomous and uncrewed systems have significantly improved and evolved in the last decades to provide a key platform for several sectors and domains, including ocean observing systems. Transition from research concept to commercial product and related services has not always been easy due to technology, business and policy framework constraints. Uncrewed Surface Vehicles (USVs) development and implementation illustrates this evolution. Starting as small custom-prototypes operating near shore for survey and research applications, USVs have evolved into more complex and capable platforms that are now able to operate in highly demanding scenarios and the open-ocean for long periods in routine-fully-autonomous mode. This progress has paved the way for small and large-scale autonomous ships (MASS) to be used as an ultimate step in maritime autonomy. The session is aiming to engage key actors representing developers, industry, research, end-users and regulatory bodies to provide an overview on current trends in USV technology, while seeking a baseline understanding of the sector from lessons learned at technical, operational, data management and policy/regulatory levels. Technology developments enabling USVs include a multidisciplinary set of cutting-edge sensors and systems for measuring, sampling, guidance, navigation, control, telemetry, propulsion, path planning, as well as specific tools for oversight of operations and situational awareness, including key applications of machine/deep learning and artificial intelligence techniques. USV capabilities and applications presently include a wide range of operations and services that address specific needs from marine and maritime sectors, highlighting ocean observing in both coastal and open-ocean areas.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; Education & Outreach; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade

Keywords: Instruments and techniquesOceans; Ocean observing systems; Instruments, sensors, techniques

OT06 Ocean Observatory Science – Connecting Processes from Events to Climate

Organizers:
Richard Dewey, rdewey@uvic.ca
John Trowbridge, jtrowbridge@whoi.edu
Deb Kelley, dskelley@uw.edu
Ed Dever, edward.dever@oregonstate.edu

We invite presentations that highlight and demonstrate all aspects of ocean observatory science. Observatories include major installations (e.g. ONC, OOI RCA, IMOS, MVCO, LoVe, MARS, DONET, EMSO/ERIC), long-term time series (e.g. HOTS, BATS, ESTOC), coastal monitoring systems (e.g. Glides, moorings, OOI Endurance and Pioneer Arrays, High Frequency Radar installations), and remote and autonomous ocean sensing arrays (e.g. Argo, BGC Argo, Saildrone, etc.). Observatory data now include both decade long time series and broad regional spatial coverage, support interdisciplinary studies, and enable scientific investigations of marine processes, event detection, and climate assessment. We particularly encourage new and innovative research approaches and results that utilize or might only be possible using ocean observatory systems. Other emphases include transdisciplinary science, novel uses of high data rate sources, data assimilation into models, installations at unique sites (i.e. undersea volcanoes, Arctic), new insights into rapid environmental change and extraordinary events, merging fixed and mobile observing systems, science enabled by new and emerging observation technologies, and connecting local, regional, and basin scale events to climate assessments.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; Education & Outreach; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Emerging informatics technologies; Ocean observatories and experiments; Ocean observing systems

OT07 Recent Advances in Seafloor Mapping: Data Collection, Analysis, Interpretation, and Application

Organizers:
Adam Skarke, adam.skarke@msstate.edu
Leslie Sautter, SautterL@cofc.edu
Arthur Trembanis, art@udel.edu
Vicki Ferrini, ferrini@ldeo.columbia.edu

Seafloor mapping data are critical for a broad range of oceanographic research as well as effective marine policy development, environmental management, and geohazard assessment. However, a majority of the global seafloor remains unmapped at a high resolution. Recent technological developments coupled with national, regional, and global seabed mapping initiatives, like the Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 project, are now generating an unprecedented volume of high-resolution seafloor mapping data. These data are revealing previously unknown bathymetric features and yielding new insight into seafloor processes, benthic habitats, and submerged cultural heritage sites. Additionally, innovative approaches to processing seafloor mapping data, including novel automated seafloor classification, characterization, and feature detection approaches, are expanding the utility of new and previously collected seabed data.

This multidisciplinary session seeks contributions focused on the collection, analysis, interpretation, and application of seafloor, shallow subsurface, and water column mapping data at any scale from coastal waters to the deep sea. We welcome contributions related to seafloor mapping including, but not limited to, cooperative seabed mapping initiatives, results of recent survey campaigns, advances in data collection and processing methodology, innovative seafloor data analysis approaches, new features and processes revealed through mapping, and application of seafloor mapping data to scientific and/or management goals.

Cross listed Tracks: Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management

Keywords: Instruments and techniques; Seafloor morphology, geology, and geophysicsOcean data assimilation and reanalysis; Benthic processes, benthos

OT08 Emerging Technologies and Algorithms for Inland, Coastal, and Oceanic Remote Sensing

Organizers:
Andrea Vander Woude, andrea.vanderwoude@noaa.gov
Sherry Palacios, spalacios@csumb.edu
Wesley Moses, Wesley.Moses@nrl.navy.mil

This session focuses on the use of innovative sensors, platforms, and algorithms, especially autonomous systems and artificial intelligence, for remote sensing of wetlands, inland and coastal waters, and the open ocean. Recent advances in sensor and platform technologies have led to the development and deployment of sensors with fine spatial and spectral resolutions and low sensor noise on a variety of platforms, including autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), moorings, autonomous surface vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and CubeSats, in addition to conventional airborne and spaceborne systems. These new modalities of measurements provide a wealth of data on biophysical and biogeochemical processes in the coastal and oceanic ecosystem. Concurrently, there has been an increased interest in the development and application of innovative approaches based on artificial intelligence and machine learning concepts to exploit spatially and spectrally rich datasets and derive key aquatic ecosystem variables, such as species composition and biodiversity of phytoplankton, health and distribution of mangroves, submerged aquatic vegetation and corals, and concentrations of organic and inorganic constituents in water. These approaches are based on statistical techniques (e.g. Bayesian methods) that have the potential to circumvent physics-based limitations encountered with traditional, analytical radiative transfer based algorithms to produce rapid solutions. We solicit presentations that address achievements and challenges in research, development, and application of innovative measurement technologies and parameter retrieval algorithms for multispectral and hyperspectral remote sensing in inland, coastal, and open ocean environments. Studies showcasing citizen science involvement and rapid response to environmental emergencies using devices such as smartphones are welcome. The session will consist of in-person and virtual oral presentations, with short poster talks.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Instruments, sensors, techniques; Coastal processes; Remote sensing and electromagnetic processes

OT09 From Origins to Oceans: Detecting and Monitoring Plastic Pollution using Emerging Technologies, Sensors, and Instrument Applications.

Organizers:
Lauren Biermann, lauren.biermann@gmail.com
Tim van Emmerik, tim.vanemmerik@wur.nl
Irene Ruiz, iruiz@azti.es
Katerina Kikaki, akikakh@central.ntua.gr
Cecilia Martin, cecilia.martin@kaust.edu.sa

Global plastic production has increased exponentially since the fifties, with 368 million metric tons manufactured in 2019 alone. Nearly 20% of this production took place within Europe, and another 20% in the USA. Together, Europe and North America are also responsible for almost half of the global plastic waste exports to South-East Asian countries, predominantly. An increasing proportion of these discarded plastics (in the order of millions of tons) enter and accumulate in our waterways and oceans every year. From freshwater to marine systems, the presence of plastic debris has generated a growing and persistent threat to environments and ecosystems, as well as an urgent multi-dimensional challenge for our society.

Methods for resource-efficient and large-scale detection and monitoring of plastic litter are still relatively new. However, they are blossoming across technologies and environments - from mounted cameras to drones to satellites, and from hotspot sources to open ocean aggregation zones. These new technologies can be crucial to fill in gaps between in situ observations and global models, allowing coverage across broad spatial and temporal scales. We invite abstracts describing the use of cameras, drones, satellites, and other remote sensing techniques to observe and monitor macroplastics on (and in) water. We also welcome work describing or demonstrating new methods and/or algorithms that complement or enhance plastic debris detection from different instruments.

Cross listed Tracks: Education & Outreach; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade; Ocean Technologies and Observatories

Keywords: Instruments and techniques; Remote sensing; Marine pollution; Techniques applicable in three or more fields

OT10 Advances in Ocean Remote Sensing and Data Science: from Instrument to Solutions Showcase

Organizers:
Chris Banks, chris.banks@noc.ac.uk
Lauren Biermann, lbi@pml.ac.uk
Wesley Moses, wesley.moses@nrl.navy.mil
Kevin Turpie, kturpie@umbc.edu

Remote sensing data offers unique perspectives of global marine environments - from the coast to the open ocean. Recent advances have resulted in a rapid expansion of capabilities of not only the instruments, but also of our ability to process the data to provide applications/solutions for real world problems. This session provides an opportunity to present these solutions to a wider audience. We welcome abstracts concerned with synergy of remotely sensed data with other sources (e.g. in situ data, modelling, machine learning approaches, other remotely sensed data). Open access and 'analysis-ready' data alongside improvements in computing facilities (e.g. cloud computing) have enabled a wider uptake of remote sensing data without the need for the downstream user to invest in local facilities. Examples include: the European Space Agency's Climate Change Initiative (CCI), which is generating repositories of climate quality data for a variety of Essential Climate Variables; tools and services from PO.DAAC (podaac.jpl.nasa.gov); and CMEMS (marine.copernicus.eu). These and others including new DIASs (Digital Information Archiving System), are making data access possible to both new and advanced users. Advances in data fusion, data harmonisation and other approaches are providing unique opportunities to combine data from multiple sensors and extend the sensors' realm of applications beyond what were originally intended, leading to enhanced understanding of physical and biogeochemical processes (e.g. fusion of multi- and hyper-spectral data, use of land sensors for oceanic applications). We solicit abstracts dealing with synergistic use of remote sensing and in situ data, including novel approaches for providing cal/val of oceanographic measurements or demonstrations of platforms/tools/services. Depending on the abstracts received, the session will accommodate in-person and virtual oral presentations, in-person and virtual short poster talks and in-person poster sessions.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; High Latitude Environments; Islands and Reefs; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Oceans; Instruments, sensors, techniques; Remote sensing and electromagnetic processes; General or miscellaneous

OT11 Lidar Technology for the Estimation of the Surface and Vertical Ocean Physical, Optical, and Biogeochemical Properties

Organizers:
Cédric Jamet, cedric.jamet@univ-littoral.fr
Davide Dionisi, davide.dionisi@cnr.it
Yongxiang Hu, yongxiang.hu-1@nasa.gov

Remote sensing of ocean color has changed our vision of the distribution of phytoplankton and ocean carbon for the past forty years. These space-borne observations provide synoptic view of the concentrations of radiometric, bio-optical and biogeochemical parameters, continuously for the past twenty-+ years at high spatial (hundreds to thousand meters) and temporal (~2 days) resolutions. However, these observations are limited to clear-sky, day-light, over clouds, high Sun elevation angles and are exponentially weighted toward the ocean surface. Furthermore, they require a processing step to remove the contribution of the atmosphere and the air-sea interface.

Active remote sensing can overcome these limitations of passive space-borne ocean color observations. One of these techniques is lidar (Light Detection and Ranging). As an active remote sensing technique, it can overcome some of the above-mentioned limitations of passive observations. Despite several cases that demonstrated oceanic applications of ship-, air- and space-borne lidars, this tool has not received significant attention from the ocean color remote sensing community.

This session aims at developing an oceanic lidar community and at demonstrating the complementary between lidar and standard ocean color observations. To do that, several paths have to be considered: development of ship-borne lidars, lidar signal simulators, space-borne oceanic profiling lidars. During this session, we seek to present the current development of the instrumental, theoretical and applied research on oceanic profiling lidars.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Instruments, sensors, techniques

OT13 Acoustical Remote Sensing of Ocean Parameters and Processes

Organizers:
Megan Ballard, meganb@arlut.utexas.edu
John Colosi, jacolosi@nps.edu
Timothy Duda, tduda@whoi.edu
Andone Lavery, alavery@whoi.edu

This is a session aimed at exploring the use of both passive and active acoustical techniques, along with other synergistic observations, to further our understanding of ocean biological, chemical, atmospheric and physical oceanographic processes from mixing to climate scales. Papers addressing modeling, theoretical and observational aspects of ocean processes, acoustic propagation physics, and inverse methods are all welcome. Areas of particular interest are 1) surface processes including air sea interaction and ice, 2) bubbles 3) monitoring of marine organisms 4) mixing and turbulence 5) surface, internal, and inertial waves, 6) mesoscale and submesoscale processes, 7) seabed properties, sediment suspension and transport, 8) arctic and high latitude processes, and 9) climate.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; Fish and Fisheries; High Latitude Environments; Islands and Reefs; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Ocean observatories and experiments; Continental shelf and slope processes; Internal and inertial waves; Turbulence, diffusion, and mixing processes

OT14 Innovative Applications of Operational and Emerging Ocean Satellite Observations

Organizers:
Estelle Obligis, estelle.obligis@eumetsat.int
Margaret Srinivasan, mss@jpl.nasa.gov
Veronica Lance, veronica.lance@noaa.gov
Vardis Tsontos, vtsontos@jpl.nasa.gov

Decades of ocean satellite observations providing global spatial coverage with near daily repeat cycles have enabled the development and proliferation of diverse research, user-driven, and operational applications for societal benefit. International space and operational agencies have dedicated significant resources to developing and continuing observations of physical, optical, and biological properties such as sea surface temperature (SST), sea surface height, ocean color and ocean vector winds to facilitate improved scientific understanding, environmental assessment, forecasting and resource management of ocean, coastal, and aquatic environments. New, technologically advanced missions are planned that will extend, expand and evolve observations of these environments and their interfaces, including estuaries and Arctic regions. These missions will enable new discoveries, and advance societally relevant applications with increased spatial, temporal and spectral resolution.

We invite contributions where observations from multiple satellites and in situ data are combined to address applied problems by using near real-time and retrospective datasets, reconstructed historical data products, and outputs from ocean reanalysis, coupled models, data assimilation or machine learning. Of particular interest are innovative methods that highlight practical uses of altimetry, scatterometry, ocean color, SST, salinity, synthetic aperture radar, and gravity data for operational, commercial or other applications. Areas of particular interest include the synergistic use of data from multiple sensors in support of navigation and marine safety, disasters, extreme events, resource exploration, renewable energy, spatial management, marine biodiversity, aquaculture, ecological forecasting, water quality, coastal hydrology, and climate assessment and impacts. Presenters are encouraged to include lessons learned and socio-economic implications of the work.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Fish and Fisheries; High Latitude Environments; Islands and Reefs; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade; Ocean Technologies and Observatories

Keywords: Remote sensing; Instruments, sensors, techniques; Techniques applicable in three or more fields; Instruments useful in three or more fields

OT15 Measuring, Modeling, and Mitigating Environmental Effects of Ocean Renewable Energy

Organizers:
Joe Haxel, joseph.haxel@pnnl.gov
Andrea Copping, Andrea.Copping@pnnl.gov
Bob Rumes, brumes@naturalsciences.be
Dan Hasselman, dan.hasselman@fundyforce.ca

Ocean renewable energy (ORE) is emerging as an important low carbon power alternative for many coastal regions, harvesting power from waves, tides, ocean currents, and offshore winds. Concerns about potential effects on marine animals, habitats, local oceanography, and ecosystem processes have slowed the deployment of ORE devices and hampered the investigation of these effects. Observations around demonstration projects, modeling of potential interactions, and plans for mitigating effects are underway, adding to this emerging field. These data will inform later deployments and guide regulatory decisions as the industry moves towards the commercial scale. If the research community comes together with regulators and developers to share information, collaborate on strategic research projects, and define best practices, the ORE sector will benefit from more streamlined and effective siting, consenting/permitting, and licensing.

This session will bring together international researchers who are pursuing ORE development and environmental research that links monitoring data around ORE devices, modeling changes in animal interactions and effects of energy removal on water bodies, and linkages to engineering designs that will mitigate potentially harmful outcomes.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Policy and the Blue Economy

Keywords: Instruments, sensors, techniques; Hydrodynamic modeling; Legislation and regulations

OT17 Ocean Observation for the Small Island Developing State (SIDS)

Organizers:
Venkatesan Ramasamy, dr.r.venkatesan@gmail.com
Atmanand Malayath, atmanandma@gmail.com
Robert Duncan McIntosh SPREP Pacific Environment, Fiji, robertmc@sprep.org
Doug Wilson University of the Virgin Islands. Caribbean, doug@coastaloceanobs.com

Under the UN Decade, there is an enhanced focus to develop science for the society and for the Small Island Developing State (SIDS) to address the climate change risk and impacts from extreme weather events and sea level rise. Further to develop and implement nature-based solutions and benefit from the blue economy. SIDS are the most vulnerable state subjected to vagaries of the Ocean but out of 25 Island states on the basis of population and area, not even 10 of these Island nations, have sustained ocean observations. This session will focus on Ocean Observation for SIDS with objectives to highlight the need to have ocean observations, capacity to apply ocean observations for social and economic benefit, and to improve the forecasts for severe weather events experienced by SIDS. The topics will also include ocean observing with newer technologies, data access, QC, modeling and data products with funding opportunity. The Capacity development for SIDS is vital and act as the primary catalyst to achieve sustained ocean observation and forecasting

Suggested topics

• Island Nation to Regional to Global: The need for, increased local knowledge, increased sustainability; Importance of growing base of traditional knowledge, Best Practices, Regional cooperation linked to poolicy on Earth System approach
• Technology: New cost-effective technologies; Upskilling locals for in-country technical maintenance
• Resources: Co-funding opportunity, Public-private partnership, Sustained capacity development

Probable sample Questions

• What is the relation of ocean science in Island nations with global ocean observation?
• How do you approach multidisciplinary observing aspects for SIDS?
• What challenges citizens face in SIDS due to coastal hazards what assistance is required?
• What are the technological limitations faced by Island nations to develop and sustain ocean observation system?
• What is the link between Fisheries and Tourism to Ocean observation data collection for SIDS?

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; Islands and Reefs; Ocean Sustainability and the UN Decade

Keywords: Land/atmosphere interactions; Real-time and responsive information delivery; Ocean observing systems; Physical and chemical properties of seawater

Co-sponsors: IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society

OT18 Seafloor geodesy: An oceanographic perspective

Organizers:
Matt Wei, matt-wei@uri.edu
Erik Fredrickson, erikfred@uw.edu
Ian Fenty, ian.fenty@jpl.nasa.gov
Rui Ponte, RPonte@aer.com

On land, satellite geodesy has transformed our understanding of the deformation associated with plate tectonics and volcanism. In the oceans, geodesy is much more challenging because electromagnetic signals from satellites do not reach the seafloor. Nevertheless, seafloor geodesy is important because most plate boundaries lie within the ocean or along coastlines and submarine volcanism dominates the Earth’s magmatic budget. Seafloor geodesy is expensive which limits the number of observation sites. The water noise is still very large which hinders the detection of tectonic signals. This session seeks submissions that discuss seafloor geodetic techniques and results, approaches to improving oceanographic corrections to seafloor geodetic data, and the potential synergies between seafloor geodesy, observational oceanography, and models of oceanographic circulation.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Seafloor morphology, geology, and geophysics; Hydrodynamic modeling

OT19 IoT and Distributed Sensing in Ocean Science and Research

Organizers:
Isabel Houghton, isabel.houghton@sofarocean.com
Tim Kearns, tim@glos.org
Tiffany Vance, tiffany.c.vance@noaa.gov
Galen Egan, galen.egan@sofarocean.com

Over the past century, a tremendous expansion in sampling and analysis of the ocean, made possible by persistent connectivity and automatic data processing, has facilitated broad progress in our understanding of ocean processes. Ship-based sampling, underwater gliders, Argo floats and moored platforms, to name a few, have all contributed to distributed monitoring of chemical, biological, and physical dynamics in the ocean.

Driven by advances in mobile, photovoltaic, and battery technology, along with the increasing availability of satellite communications, large-scale and persistent distributed sensing in our oceans and lakes has become increasingly tractable. Smart, connected devices, and the supporting processes to convert that data into information form the fabric of Marine IoT. Leveraging IoT technologies in the marine environment provides opportunities for new and innovative research, observing, and monitoring techniques that can provide end-users with the information they need faster than ever. Whether that’s through engaging interested members of the public through citizen science or incorporating smart technologies into research equipment, Marine IoT can provide important new data streams and connect us in ways that weren’t possible before. Further, developments in edge and cloud computing allow us to derive critical decision-support information from these new streams.

Join us to explore the role Marine IoT plays in understanding our oceans, coasts, and Great Lakes. In this session, we aim to elevate perspectives from both instrument development, deployment, and data utilization. Thus, we invite submissions pertaining to distributed sensing technologies (e.g. low-cost buoys and other marine IoT), strategies for maintaining distributed observations, approaches for real-time data dissemination, and research methods pertinent to usage of distributed IoT data sets, particularly with high spatiotemporal coverage.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management

Keywords: Sensor web; Data assimilation, integration and fusionInstruments, sensors, techniques; Surface waves and tides

Physical-Biological Interactions

PI01 Meso- and submesoscale processes in Eastern Boundary Upwelling Systems: blind spots in global climate assessment

Organizers:
Jordyn Moscoso, jmoscoso@atmos.ucla.edu
Daniel McCoy, demccoy@atmos.ucla.edu
Ryan Rykaczewski, ryan.rykaczewski@noaa.gov
Ivy Frenger, ifrenger@geomar.de

Regional primary production and export in Eastern Boundary Upwelling Systems (EBUSs) are controlled by biophysical forcing that span multiple scales of variability. At the large scale, air-sea interactions and wind-forcing drives upwelling and robust phytoplankton blooms. At the mesoscale and submesoscale, eddies, fronts, and filaments have been shown to decrease surface productivity and provide a cross-shore link between the coast and the oligotrophic gyres. Furthermore, mesoscale and submesoscale processes are strongly coupled to patterns of atmospheric forcing and are sensitive to changes in large-scale variability.As a result of these complex responses of productivity to physical processes occurring across a range of scales, the modeling of the circulation and biological productivity in EBUS remains a challenge. he magnitude and pattern of these changes are uncertain, and the consequences of these large-scale changes on smaller-scale features that influence ecosystem productivity remain unresolved.

With this session, we seek to improve the community's understanding of processes driving near-shore production and cross-shelf export within EBUS and their sensitivity to climate change. We welcome contributions that highlight advances in modeling and observational approaches aimed at elucidating regional physical, atmospheric, biogeochemical, and ecological controls on productivity, in particular at the mesoscale and submesoscale, both unique and common to each major EBUS. We specifically encourage submissions that investigate the sensitivity of these processes in EBUSs to climate variability and climate change.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Physical and biogeochemical interactions; Upwelling and convergencesEddies and mesoscale processes

PI02 Ecological Fluid Mechanics - Interactions among Organisms and their Fluid Environment

Organizers:
Donald Webster, dwebster@ce.gatech.edu
Bradford Gemmell, bgemmell@usf.edu
Arvind Santhanakrishnan, askrish@okstate.edu

The session will be dedicated to reports from studies of interactions among organisms and their fluid environment. The session addresses the role that fluid motion, flow gradients, and chemical stirring play in shaping organism behavior, interactions, recruitment, reproduction, and community structure. Relevant studies span topics of biomechanics, transport and settling, propulsion, and sensory ecology. Themes may include the influence of instantaneous flow patterns, the influence of extreme physical events, the influence of scale on the biological-physical coupling, and biological/ecological advantages mediated by flow and chemical transport. For instance, what can we learn from how organisms balance physical versus biological forcing? We invite studies addressing a broad range of taxonomic groups and flow regimes spanning creeping, laminar, unsteady, wavy, and turbulent flows.

Cross listed Tracks: Marine Ecology and Biodiversity

Keywords: General or miscellaneous; Benthic processes, benthos; Phytoplankton; Zooplankton

PI03 Western Boundary Current-Continental Shelf Interactions

Organizers:
William Savidge, william.savidge@skio.uga.edu
Neil Malan, n.malan@unsw.edu.au
Frederico Brandini, brandini@usp.br
Laura Braby, saeon.egagasini@gmail.com

Western Boundary Currents (WBCs) interact strongly with their continental margins in the mid-latitudes before separating from the coasts in the vicinity of 35 degrees. WBC meanders and eddies bring deep, nutrient-rich water close to the surface adjacent to the continental shelf. The upwelled nutrients support shelf phytoplankton blooms and shelf food webs. On the longest spatial and temporal scales, separation of WBCs from the continental margin provides a mechanism for export of the accumulated shelf production back into the deep sea. On shorter scales both atmospheric and boundary current processes provide the means for intermittent export of shelf carbon and nutrients. While the fundamental features of WBC-dominated shelves are similar, differences in shelf morphology, boundary current strength, and atmospheric forcing lead to upwelling episodes of varying strength and duration in different locations, with cascading effects on shelf food webs and carbon export potential. The contributions of WBC-adjacent continental shelves to regional and global carbon budgets are relatively weakly constrained because the predominantly episodic and subthermocline processes dominating shelf-ocean exchanges have not been amenable to observation by remote sensing, shelf moorings, or short-duration shipboard sampling. These systems are also difficult to model accurately, due to a combination of numerical constraints such as high velocities and steep topographic settings. New observational tools are beginning to address these challenges, and modeling constraints continue to ease with improvements in computing capacity. Presentations on all aspects of subtropical shelf-WBC interactions are encouraged, from the multi-scale physical processes that determine shelf-WBC exchanges, to shelf chemical fluxes and export, and to the biological responses to WBC forcing on the shelf.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Numerical modeling; Western boundary currents; Carbon cycling; Food webs, structure, and dynamics

PI04 Investigating the impact of (sub)mesoscale ocean dynamics on intermediate and upper trophic levels

Organizers:
Camrin Braun, cbraun@whoi.edu
Alice Della Penna, alice.penna@auckland.ac.nz
Martin Arostegui, marosteg@uw.edu

Mesoscale and submesoscale oceanographic features, such as eddies and fronts, make up the internal weather of the ocean, exciting vertical fluxes and transporting planktonic communities hundreds to thousands of kilometers. The application of satellite technologies and high-resolution oceanographic models has facilitated an ever-increasing knowledge of the physics at these scales and the biophysical drivers of primary production. However, our limited understanding of the influence of meso- and submesoscale dynamics on intermediate and upper trophic levels is hindering an ecosystem-based view of physical/biological interactions at these scales. Recent efforts have led to significant progress in quantifying how eddies and fronts structure pelagic ecosystems - including the spatial distribution of zooplankton and micronekton, behavior of top predators (e.g., seabirds, marine mammals, and fishes), and their trophic interactions. Thus, we invite presentations that focus on physical-biological interactions at fine scales (meso and submesoscale), particularly those that explore relevant mechanisms for intermediate and upper trophic levels.

Cross listed Tracks: Fish and Fisheries; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Eddies and mesoscale processes; Fronts and jets; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling; Higher trophic levels

PI05 Shelf-break frontal dynamics: integrating biological, biogeochemical and physical observations for a holistic view of ecosystem function

Organizers:
Corday Selden, crselden@marine.rutgers.edu
Sophie Clayton, sclayton@odu.edu
Hilde Oliver, holiver@whoi.edu
Dennis McGillicuddy, dmcgillicuddy@whoi.edu

At the edge of the continental shelf, sharp density gradients divide terrestrially-influenced shelf waters and oceanic waters on the slope. Such shelf-break frontal systems are highly dynamic and can strongly influence coastal ecosystems. Seasonal variability as well as large-scale physical processes, including eddies and current meandering, can affect frontal stratification and cross-shelf exchange, which in turn influence nutrient delivery to and conditions on the shelf, and thus biological productivity, diversity and chemical cycling. Integrating physical, biological and biogeochemical data is therefore pivotal to understanding ecosystem function in productive and often economically important shelf environments. Recent advances in ocean observing technologies and modeling can facilitate these efforts, particularly the investigation of fine-scale processes, by improving data coverage and resolution. We invite contributions to this session that explore how physical dynamics influence a) biogeochemical cycling, b) biodiversity, biogeography and biomass distributions, and c) plankton interactions at continental shelf-breaks throughout the world’s ocean, especially those leveraging high-resolution observations.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Continental shelf and slope processes; Physical and biogeochemical interactions; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling

PI06 Marine Animals as Ecosystem Indicators

Organizers:
Megan Cimino, megan.cimino@noaa.gov
Steph Brodie, stephanie.brodie@noaa.gov
Steven Bograd, steven.bograd@noaa.gov
Elliott Hazen, elliott.hazen@noaa.gov
Kevin McGann, kevin.mcgann@maine.edu

We lack synthetic and regularly updated information on ecosystem structure and function to adequately describe and predict changes in ecosystem state. While we can readily measure oceanographic variables such as temperature, we often lack the ability to translate these data into predicted ecosystem responses. As we unravel patterns and processes that underlie animal ecology, their behavior and habitat use reveal they are fine-tuned to exploit their preferences. Often, the presence of a species outside of their typical habitat range can be an indicator of anomalous environmental phenomena even before we have observed a shift in ecosystem state. In this session, we will explore the utility of using animals to indicate ecosystem processes and climate anomalies across all time and space scales. We invite presentations that use marine animals (entire food webs, single populations, or individual species) as indicators of terrestrial, atmospheric, and/or oceanographic ecosystem-level processes. Examples include the presence of tropical small pelagic species in subtropical regions indicating shifts in circulation, shifts in top predator foraging locations indicating a change in food web structure, and booms in gelatinous populations driven by ocean warming. By identifying animals that predictably respond to environmental and ecological change, we can use these ‘sentinels’ to better detect climate-driven ecosystem shifts.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Fish and Fisheries; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Climate and interannual variability; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling; Population dynamics and ecology; Food webs, structure, and dynamics

PI07 Biogeochemical-Physical Interactions in the Tropical Oceans

Organizers:
Yohei Takano, ytakano@lanl.gov
Yassir Eddebbar, yeddebba@ucsd.edu
Sarah Schlunegger, sarah.schlunegger@princeton.edu
Michio Watanabe, michiow@jamstec.go.jp

The tropical oceans are home to Oxygen Minimum Zones (OMZs) and some of the most productive marine ecosystems, and represent the largest natural source of oceanic carbon to the atmosphere. The biogeochemical cycles of oxygen, nutrients, and carbon in this region are tightly coupled to ocean circulation and climate variability from diurnal to multidecadal timescales. Ocean primary production can in turn influence climate and ocean circulation by modulating the penetration depth of short-wave radiative fluxes. Characterizing the extent and mechanisms underlying this coupling is critical to the detection of anthropogenic influence, the monitoring of marine ecosystems, and for advancing predictability in the tropics, but sparse sampling, inadequate model representation, and incomplete understanding of key physical and biogeochemical processes remain a major challenge for this region.

We invite interdisciplinary studies of ocean biogeochemical and physical interactions across scales in the tropical oceans. We particularly welcome submissions on recent advances in observations, numerical models, and their combined use to elucidate the sensitivity of ocean biogeochemical cycles of oxygen, carbon, nutrients and plankton dynamics to climate variability from seasonal to decadal timescales, and their coupling to ocean circulation from submesoscale to basin wide processes. We welcome contributions from climate science, physical oceanography, and ocean biogeochemistry communities and aim for stimulating discussion among the cross-disciplinary groups.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger

Keywords: Physical and biogeochemical interactions; General or miscellaneous; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling

PI08 Dynamic Coastal Change: Knowledge, Gaps, and Decision-Support

Organizers:
Davina Passeri, dpasseri@usgs.gov
Erika Lentz, elentz@usgs.gov
Nicholas Enwright, enwrightn@usgs.gov
Julie Zinnert, jczinnert@vcu.edu

Coastal environments, like estuarine-marsh-barrier island landscapes, are dynamic systems that provide ecological, economic, recreational, and cultural value and services. Over short timescales (hours to days), storms can inundate and reshape coastlines through dune and marsh erosion, overwash and breaching. Over longer timescales (decades), climatic change drivers, and sea-level rise (SLR) in particular have the potential to affect these environments with increased tide and storm inundation, causing increased shoreline erosion, ecosystem transgression and wetland loss. Similarly, warming temperatures and changes in precipitation can lead to shifts in foundation plant species. Understanding the complex interactions between physical and ecological processes, their timescales, human influences, and informational and spatial gaps, are critical for generating short- and long-term predictions to inform management of dynamic coastal settings. This session seeks contributions focused on:

• Integrated modeling approaches to understand changes in physical and ecological processes
• Assessments of dynamic landscape change, including barrier islands, wetlands, coastal ecosystems and habitats
• Approaches that consider uncertainty, such as human actions or future climate change, alongside process-knowledge to highlight knowledge gaps

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Sea level change; Coastal processes; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling

PI09 New insights into submesoscale ocean biogeochemistry

Organizers:
Dan Whitt, daniel.b.whitt@nasa.gov
Jessica Luo, jessica.luo@noaa.gov
C. Brock Woodson, bwoodson@uga.edu
Laure Resplandy, laurer@princeton.edu

For many years, field observations have revealed considerable submesoscale (~0.1-10 km) spatio-temporal variations in marine and coastal biogeochemistry and ecosystems that are associated with myriad environmental factors, with the ultimate combination of physical, chemical, and biological processes difficult to disentangle. However, recent developments in observational technologies and higher resolution models continue to provide new views on ecological and biogeochemical dynamics over a wider range of time and space scales than ever before. We invite contributions that provide novel insights into the dynamics of submesoscale biogeochemical variability and how these dynamics scale up to impact larger scales and patterns. These could take the form of new theories, parameterizations, or conclusions based on observations and/or numerical simulations.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Upper ocean and mixed layer processes; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling; Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling

Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger

PL01 Multi-scale transport of oceanographic tracers: mean flow, stirring, and mixing

Organizers:
Henri Drake, henrifdrake@gmail.com
Spencer Jones, spencerj@ldeo.columbia.edu
Laura Cimoli, lcimoli@ucsd.edu

This session will focus on physical processes that shape the evolution of tracer distributions in the ocean at all scales. Tracers can either be natural (e.g. temperature, salinity, oxygen, nutrients, and radiocarbon) or sourced from human activity, for example anthropogenic carbon, radiatively forced heat anomalies, and nutrients from agricultural runoff. Through the transport of natural and anthropogenic tracers, the global ocean circulation contributes to the regulation and variability of the climate system and ocean biological productivity.

When the evolution of tracer distributions is known from observations (e.g. along hydrographic sections), it can be used to infer oceanic transport and variability. Conversely, when ocean transports are known, they can be used to evolve tracer distributions forward in time using Eulerian or Lagrangian methods. Tracer distributions are also affected by stirring along density surfaces - dominated by large-scale geostrophic turbulence - and mixing across density surfaces, dominated by small-scale stratified and isotropic turbulence. In numerical models, the full spectrum of oceanic flows cannot be resolved and these subgrid-scale transport processes must be parameterized. Accurate modelling of oceanic tracers depends upon the fidelity of the model’s resolved and parameterized transport processes, while observations of tracer distributions provide tests of model performance and powerful constraints on parameter values.

This session aims at bringing together any research focusing on physical transport processes through the lens of tracer transport, including observational, modelling and theoretical work. We particularly encourage interdisciplinary contributions.

Cross listed Tracks: Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: General or miscellaneous; General or miscellaneous; Chemical tracers

PL02 El Niño in a changing climate

Organizers:
Jérôme Vialard, jerome.vialard@ird.fr
Samantha Stevenson, stevenson@bren.ucsb.edu
Malte F. Stuecker, stuecker@hawaii.edu
Andrew T. Wittenberg, andrew.wittenberg@noaa.gov

The El Niño / Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is Earth's leading mode of interannual climate variability, with prominent impacts around the Pacific Ocean, and also globally via atmospheric teleconnections. ENSO is highly relevant to society, due to its strong effects on weather patterns, extreme events, marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and storage of atmospheric heat and carbon by the ocean. ENSO is also an excellent research testbed for our understanding of tropical climate variability, coupled ocean-atmosphere interactions, and their impacts on oceanic biogeochemistry and ecosystems. Though the basic mechanisms of ENSO are understood, and relatively well represented in an existing hierarchy of models with varying complexities, many crucial challenges remain in understanding and simulating ENSO's diverse “flavors”, decadal variability, asymmetrical features, predictability, impacts, and responses to climate change. This session solicits contributions that improve our understanding of ENSO from an observational, modelling and theoretical perspective. Topics to be considered include ENSO mechanisms; extreme ENSO events; ENSO in past and future climates; ENSO’s interaction with other tropical basins; ENSO's decadal modulation; ENSO impacts, including those on biogeochemistry and ecosystems; and ENSO representation in models. Contributions dealing with conceptual models of ENSO are particularly welcome, and are the topic of the companion Tutorial session coordinated with the International CLIVAR Working Group on ENSO Conceptual Models.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; Fish and Fisheries; Marine Ecology and Biodiversity; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Climate dynamics; Oceans; ENSO; Air/sea interactions

PL03 Ocean Heat Transport Across Scales: Mechanisms and Impacts

Organizers:
Wilbert Weijer, wilbert@lanl.gov
Oluwayemi Garuba, Oluwayemi.Garuba@pnnl.gov

Ocean heat transport plays a critical role in the global Earth system. The redistribution of heat by the oceans plays an important role in regulating Earth’s global energy balance, for moderating regional climate, and for sequestering excess heat captured by anthropogenic warming. In addition, ocean heat transport has important impacts on other Earth system components, in particular the atmosphere and cryosphere. Yet, many aspects of ocean heat transport are still poorly understood, particularly due to challenges in observing and modeling transport processes that span a wide range of spatiotemporal scales, from double-diffusive convection to the global overturning circulation. Similarly, the impacts of ocean heat transport on the atmosphere and cryosphere are not always well understood; for instance the extent to which ocean heat transport variability is compensated by the atmosphere (Bjerknes Compensation); or the response of ice shelves to ocean heat supply.
In this session we aim to present an integrated picture of ocean heat transport across scales. We invite abstracts that address mechanisms of ocean heat transport, including microscale (e.g., double-diffusive convection), mesoscale (e.g., eddies, Agulhas Leakage), basin scale (e.g., gyre circulation) and global scale (overturning circulation); and from observational, theoretical, and modeling perspectives. We also invite abstracts that consider the role of ocean heat transport in global and regional heat budgets; its importance for climate predictability and predictions; and interactions with other Earth system components, for instance ice shelves (e.g., basal melting), sea ice (e.g., polynyas), marine biogeochemistry (e.g., phytoplankton blooms), and the atmosphere (e.g., Bjerknes Compensation).

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; High Latitude Environments; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Ocean predictability and prediction; Arctic and Antarctic oceanography; General circulation; Turbulence, diffusion, and mixing processes

PL04 Indian Ocean circulation and its impact on air-sea interactions, biogeochemistry and ecology

Organizers:
Amit Tandon, atandon@umassd.edu
Hemantha Wijesekera, Hemantha.Wijesekera@nrlssc.navy.mil
Helen Phillips, h.e.phillips@utas.edu.au
Pattabhi Rama Rao, pattabhi@incois.gov.in
Raleigh Hood, rhood@umces.edu

The Indian ocean is unique due to its seasonal forcing and resulting reversing currents, and its influence on a large fraction of Earth’s human population. The role of the changing Indian Ocean in fueling severe weather, and monsoons and their impacts on human livelihood and the hydrological cycle provides strong motivation to study the Indian Ocean. New oceanic pathways and variability in Indian ocean dynamics continue to be discovered, in this least-studied of ocean basins, along with the variability across a range of timescales from intra-seasonal, inter-annual to decadal in the ocean circulation and their impacts on biogeochemistry and ecology are also being revealed. In the recent decade, there have been new advances in the understanding of the role of small-scale processes in setting up the large-scale balances, in marine heatwaves as well as in the connectivity of the Indian Ocean to the Pacific, Atlantic, and Southern oceans. This session invites contributions based on observations, modeling, and theory in the Indian Ocean that focus on understanding and predicting the links between Indian Ocean variability and monsoon systems on (intra)seasonal to interannual timescales, small-scale mixing, multi-scale processes, and extreme events in this unique ocean, interactions and exchanges between the Indian Ocean and other ocean basins, decadal variability, and its prediction, and the response to climate change. Contributions examining how all these physical processes impact Indian Ocean biogeochemistry and ecology are also encouraged. Contributions to this innovative session with presentations in virtual and hybrid formats are welcome from scientists in diverse research areas.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: OceansAir/sea interactions; Upper ocean and mixed layer processes; Currents

PL05 Ventilation, circulation and mixing of the deep ocean: Observing and modeling the deep and bottom limbs of the meridional overturning circulation

Organizers:
Sarah Purkey, spurkey@ucsd.edu
Jonathan Nash, Jonathan.Nash@oregonstate.edu
Sonya Legg, sonya.legg@noaa.gov
Eleanor Frajka-Williams, eleanor.frajka@noc.ac.uk

The physical processes controlling ventilation, circulation, and mixing of the deep ocean play a critical role in the rate of anthropogenic heat and carbon uptake by the ocean through their regulation of the strength of the deep and bottom cells of the meridional overturning circulation (MOC). Despite its climatically important role, the remoteness of the deep ocean and high latitudes have left the deep and bottom limbs of the MOC vastly under sampled and poorly constrained in climate models. This session aims to highlight the recent explosion of focus on the deep ocean through new observing and modeling efforts. We welcome recent studies examining all aspects of the deep and bottom limbs of the global overturning circulation, including but not limited to (i) formation of Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) and North Atlantic Deepwater (NADW), (ii) bottom water properties and pathways throughout the global ocean, and (iii) deep ocean mixing. Studies focused on the deep ocean’s spatial and temporal variability of mixing, heat content, and properties on all time scales from seasonal to interglacial are highly encouraged. This session welcomes results from new and old deep ocean observational platforms and programs such as Deep Argo, RAPID, SAMBA, O-SNAP, GO-SHIP, DynOPO, and BLT Recipes, as well as insights from theoretical to global scale models.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; High Latitude Environments; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: General circulation; Decadal ocean variability; Turbulence, diffusion, and mixing processes; Deep recirculations

PL06 Mesoscale Eddy Energy and Ocean Transport

Organizers:
Elizabeth Yankovsky, eyankovsky@gmail.com
Nora Loose, nora.loose@colorado.edu
Jacob Steinberg, jsteinberg@whoi.edu
Gustavo Marques, gmarques@ucar.edu

A majority of oceanic kinetic energy is contained within the mesoscale range, manifesting as eddies, fronts, filaments, and current meanders with horizontal scales of 10’s-100’s km. Motions at these scales drive energy exchanges across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, between the ocean and atmosphere, and across potential and kinetic energy reservoirs. These exchanges play a significant role in transporting momentum, heat, carbon, and nutrients throughout the world's oceans. Still, they remain challenging to constrain using observations and expensive to simulate explicitly in global-scale climate models.

This session, organized by the ongoing Climate Process Team on Ocean Transport and Eddy Energy (https://ocean-eddy-cpt.github.io/), is motivated by the need to both improve understanding and model representation of mesoscale processes. We encourage broad community participation and submissions relating, but not limited, to the following topics:

• Novel diagnostics of eddy sources, sinks, and fluxes of momentum, buoyancy, and energy;
• Understanding of mesoscale eddy energy: its vertical structure, horizontal distribution, role in ocean circulation, and implications for tracer transport;
• Development of scale-aware, energetically-consistent parameterizations for eddy momentum and buoyancy fluxes in numerical models;
• Observations that provide new physical insights and can inform eddy parameterization development.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Numerical modeling; Eddies and mesoscale processes; Turbulence, diffusion, and mixing processes; General circulation

For More Information: https://ocean-eddy-cpt.github.io/

PL07 Mechanisms for Variability, Circulation, and Transformation of Water Masses in the Southern Ocean

Organizers:
D. Gwyn Evans, dgwynevans@noc.ac.uk
Annie Foppert, annie.foppert@utas.edu.au
Edward Doddridge, edward.doddridge@utas.edu.au
Madeleine K. Youngs, my2368@nyu.edu

The Southern Ocean plays an important role in global climate; encircling the globe, linking the different ocean basins, and connecting the surface ocean with the abyss. The southern limb of the global meridional overturning circulation regulates the storage of heat and carbon in the deep ocean through transformation of deep water into bottom and intermediate water. The upwelling of nutrient-rich deep water further regulates primary productivity and the biological pumping of carbon into the deep ocean, thus affecting global biogeochemical cycling. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current and the meridional overturning circulation have historically been described in zonal-mean frameworks that neglect the potential contributions from local and regional processes. Recent studies show that localized processes including those due to the influence of topography and frontal dynamics shape the large-scale dynamics, upwelling, tracer distributions, and biogeochemistry in the Southern Ocean.

This session aims to facilitate a discussion on the physical mechanisms that control the variability, circulation, and transformation of water masses in the Southern Ocean. Our focus will be on the importance of local dynamics in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the fluxes and upwelling of deep water across the Southern Ocean and onto the Antarctic shelf, and the mechanisms responsible for the export of bottom and intermediate water into the global ocean. To complement this, we encourage discussion on diabatic processes responsible for the transformation of these water masses by air-ice-sea interactions and mixing, as well as discussion linking the dynamics and water-mass transformation to the biogeochemical properties of the Southern Ocean.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; High Latitude Environments; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Physical and biogeochemical interactions; Eddies and mesoscale processes; Turbulence, diffusion, and mixing processes; Air/sea interactions

PL08 Variability of the South Atlantic Circulation and its Inter-Basin Linkages and their role in the Climate System and Marine Ecosystems.

Organizers:
Janet Sprintall, jsprintall@ucsd.edu
Siren Ruehs, sruehs@geomar.de
Gaston Manta, gaston.manta@lmd.ipsl.fr
Manuel Gutierrez-villanueva, mog002@ucsd.edu

The Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) is a key component of the climate system, providing the primary mechanism for the spreading of heat, salt, carbon, and other biogeochemical properties around the global ocean. In particular, the South Atlantic component of the MOC – the SAMOC – is characterized by a complex system of currents that facilitate exchange within the Atlantic Ocean basin, as well as inter-basin exchanges between the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean via the Drake Passage and the Indian Ocean via the Agulhas Current system. South Atlantic variability over time scales ranging from intra-seasonal to decadal has been linked to changes in coastal sea level, weather patterns, and large-scale climate variability. This session solicits contributions that use observations, numerical modeling, and theory aimed at advancing our understanding of processes, forcing mechanisms and prediction of the SAMOC including its inter-basin linkages. We particularly encourage recent results discussing the role of the South Atlantic variability on various climatic attributes including the transport of heat, salt and nutrients, the impact on extreme weather, marine heat waves, and sea level variability, and how these processes impact the marine ecosystem.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; High Latitude Environments; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: General circulation; Currents; Fronts and jets

For More Information: https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/SAMOC_international/

PL09 Tides in the past, present and future

Organizers:
Sophie-Berenice Wilmes, s.wilmes@bangor.ac.uk
Maarten Buijsman, maarten.buijsman@usm.edu
Matthew Huber, huberm@purdue.edu
Joanne Williams, joll@noc.ac.uk

This session invites research on all aspects of tides and associated mixing over a wide range of space and time scales on Earth and other planets including exoplanets. Tides impact many of Earth’s climate processes such as ocean mixing, the large-scale overturning circulation, nutrient fluxes and ocean biogeochemistry, and even ice sheet dynamics. Interactions between tides, storm surges and sea level change may lead to coastal flooding. The harnessing of tidal energy can provide a source of renewable energy. Accurate tidal models are necessary for the analysis of remote sensing and altimetry data especially in light of the upcoming observational missions.
We welcome contributions on progress in numerical modelling of surface and internal tides and assessments of their accuracy, internal-tide mean flow interactions, nonlinear wave-wave interactions, tidal dynamics in rivers and estuaries, atmospheric tides, observations and simulations of tidally driven mixing, insights into secular and long-term changes in tides and tidal processes on global to regional scales, contributions on tidal variability from observing techniques, and research into the role of tides in shaping evolutionary processes and climate on Earth and other planets.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Surface waves and tides; Internal and inertial waves; Turbulence, diffusion, and mixing processes; Sea level: variations and mean

PL10 Low-Latitude Ocean Dynamics

Organizers:
Audrey Delpech, audrey.delpech@legos.obs-mip.fr
Ryan Holmes, ryan.holmes@unsw.edu.au
Tom Farrar, jfarrar@whoi.edu
Peter Brandt, pbrandt@geomar.de

Large-scale ocean dynamics is markedly different at low latitudes compared to higher latitudes. Due to the vanishing Coriolis parameter and beta-effect, the low-latitudes are characterized by energetic alternating zonal currents and a broad range of equatorial waves, which can lead to motions governed by a unique set of dynamical balances often differing from canonical mid-latitude mesoscale and submesoscale dynamics. At tropical western boundaries, meridional transport across the equator may contribute to meridional overturning or subtropical-tropical exchanges. At tropical eastern boundaries, equatorial forcing results in the generation of coastally trapped waves that contribute to the variability in eastern boundary upwelling regions and provide teleconnections to higher latitudes. Further, the strong coupling of the tropical ocean with the atmosphere leads to coupled modes of variability that play a key role in regional and global climate variability. This session aims to bring together studies on low-latitude ocean dynamical processes and their implications for the ocean as a whole, climate variability and biogeochemical cycles. We seek contributions analyzing processes from a wide range of spatial and temporal scales including low-frequency coupled variability (climate modes), upper- and deep-ocean circulation, processes at the western and eastern boundaries, deep zonal jets, equatorial waves, flow instabilities, mixed layer processes, internal waves and upper- and abyssal-ocean turbulence, with a particular focus on the interactions between these different scales. Studies based on observations, numerical simulations and theoretical approaches, and concerning the Pacific, Atlantic or Indian equatorial oceans are welcomed.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Equatorial oceanography; Fronts and jets; Planetary waves; General or miscellaneous

PL11 Key uncertainties challenging our understanding of the responses of Eastern Boundary Upwelling Systems to climate variability and change

Organizers:
Ryan Rykaczewski, ryan.rykaczewski@noaa.gov
Alban Lazar, alban.lazar@locean-ipsl.upmc.fr
Thomas Toniazzo, thto@norceresearch.no

Although Eastern Boundary Upwelling Systems are recognized as areas of high biological productivity and socioeconomic value, the response of these systems to climate variability and climate change remains poorly resolved. Representation of these systems in global general circulation models is challenged by spatial resolution. However, even the signs of projected trends in upwelling intensity, nutrient supply, and productivity are inconsistent across global models. Inter-model consistency in projections of changes in large-scale atmospheric characteristics (e.g., positioning and intensity of major pressure cells or westerly wind bands) and basin-scale ocean processes (e.g., water-mass distributions and water-column stratification) may offer an opportunity to describe future changes in upwelling systems despite insufficient representation of the upwelling process.

In this session, we seek to improve understanding of the consequences of large-scale atmosphere-ocean variability and changes for the physical and biogeochemical characteristics of Eastern Boundary Upwelling Systems and their ecosystems. We welcome contributions which examine the mechanisms that stimulate uncertainties in EBUS and ecosystem responses to large-scale forcing. Comparative approaches that consider unique aspects or the shared characteristics of major eastern boundary currents are also encouraged.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Modeling; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Global climate models; Climate and interannual variability; Eastern boundary currents; Ecosystems, structure, dynamics, and modeling

PL12 Understanding and Predicting the Gulf of Mexico Ocean Dynamics

Organizers:
Ruoying He, rhe@ncsu.edu
Steven Morey, steven.morey@famu.edu
Eric Chassignet, echassignet@fsu.edu
Donald Boesch, DBoesch@nas.edu
Karina Khazmutdinova, KKhazmutdinova@nas.edu

For the past several years, a number of research programs have funded significant efforts to advance understanding of and forecasting capabilities for the Gulf of Mexico circulation, including the Loop Current, its associated eddies, and abyssal dynamics. One such programs is the National Academies’ Understanding Gulf Ocean Systems initiative, which focuses on improving forecasts of the physical dynamics of the open Gulf of Mexico in space and time scales useful for the reduction of risks to offshore energy exploration and production, as well as for other challenges such as forecasting hurricane intensification and managing fisheries. What has been learned, how can this scientific progress be incorporated into operational models, and what are the remaining gaps in knowledge impeding predictive skill? This session’s goals are to discuss the most recent understanding of dynamical processes governing the Gulf of Mexico ocean dynamics, advances in prediction, as well as the application of those advances towards societal benefit for Gulf Coast communities.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: General circulation; General circulation; Hydrodynamic modeling; Air/sea interactions

Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

PS01 Inter-scale connections and transfers in mesoscale, submesoscale, and boundary layer turbulence

Organizers:
Brodie Pearson, brodie.pearson@oregonstate.edu
Dhruv Balwada, dbalwada@uw.edu
Abigail Bodner, abigail_bodner@brown.edu
Xiaolong Yu, xiaolong.yu@ifremer.fr

An array of turbulent regimes are realized in the ocean, from millimeter-scale dissipation processes to mesoscale eddies spanning hundreds of kilometers. This turbulence plays critical roles in the Earth system, for example by mediating the transfer of energy and tracer variability between forcing and dissipative scales, or by coupling with larger-scale and mean ocean properties. However, there are many challenges that limit our understanding of this turbulence and its impacts on the real ocean. These challenges stem from the vast multitude of turbulent motions in the ocean, from their non-linear nature which catalyzes interaction between different turbulent regimes, and from the inherent challenges of modeling or observing this range of scales.

This session invites contributions from observational, modeling, or theoretical studies that shed light on inter-scale transfers and connections either within a specific turbulence regime (mesoscale, submesoscale, or surface/bottom boundary layer), or between these regimes. We are also interested in studies that place these turbulent processes in a wider context, including the advancement of parameterizations to emulate these processes, the development of novel observational or analytical tools to quantify them, and the assessment of their impacts on the wider ocean and Earth systems at regional and global scales.

Cross listed Tracks: Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Turbulence, diffusion, and mixing processes; Upper ocean and mixed layer processes; Eddies and mesoscale processes; Fronts and jets

PS02 Multi-scale turbulent mixing of the ocean surface boundary layer

Organizers:
Ivan Savelyev, ivan.savelyev@nrl.navy.mil
Leah Johnson, leah_johnson@brown.edu
Jacob Wenegrat, wenegrat@umd.edu
Yalin Fan, yalin.fan@nrlssc.navy.mil

The turbulent ocean surface boundary layer (OSBL) communicates heat, mass, and momentum between the atmosphere and ocean interior, hosts the majority of oceanic primary productivity, and plays a key role in the evolution of the earth system over seasonal to centennial time scales. Representing variability in OSBL turbulent mixing is an abiding challenge in the modeling of earth systems due to the complexity of turbulent OSBL processes and their interaction with atmospheric turbulence, ocean interior mixing, surface waves, submesoscale processes, and sea ice.

This session invites contributions from observational, numerical, and theoretical process studies, as well as parameterization development work. We are interested in all processes related to OSBL turbulent mixing, vertical or lateral, taking place on and interacting among a wide range of scales. These can range from the smallest wind driven boundary layer turbulence O(1cm), to convective or Langmuir turbulence O(100m), and up to submesoscale turbulence and frontal instability processes O(10km), among others.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Air/sea interactions; Fronts and jets; Turbulence, diffusion, and mixing processes; Upper ocean and mixed layer processes

PS03 The challenge of understanding rapidly changing small-scale ocean dynamics: preparation for SWOT

Organizers:
LEE-LUENG FU, llf@jpl.nasa.gov
Rosemary Morrow, rosemary.morrow@legos.obs-mip.fr
Tom Farrar, jfarrar@whoi.edu

The Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission, with planned launch date in November 2022, will allow a new, high-resolution view of water surface heights in the ocean and on land. The mission is developed jointly by NASA and the French Space Agency CNES with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency and the UK Space agency. The oceanographic goal of the mission is to study the dynamics of ocean circulation at scales shorter than those resolved by the conventional altimetry: 150 km in two dimensions. Using the technique of radar interferometry, SWOT is expected to extend the resolved wavelengths to 15 km, depending on the sea state and ocean dynamics that vary geographically and seasonally. To meet the challenge to validate and understand the unprecedented space observations, we need to develop innovative two-dimensional mapping schemes, and in-situ observing systems in conjunction with state-of-the-art data assimilative models to estimate the state of the ocean at the SWOT scales. This session encourages contributions from observational, statistical, theoretical, and modeling studies addressing our understanding of ocean dynamics at spatial scales of 15-150 km, including quasi-geostrophic motions and internal tides and gravity waves.

Cross listed Tracks: Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Eddies and mesoscale processes; Fronts and jets; Instruments, sensors, techniques

For More Information: https://swot.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/overview/

PS04 Vertical Transport: Connecting the Surface to the Deep

Organizers:
Dhruv Balwada, dhruvbalwada@gmail.com
Mara Freilich, maraf@mit.edu
Hilary Palevsky, palevsky@bc.edu
James Alexander Brearley, jambre@bas.ac.uk

The vertical transport of properties, including carbon, oxygen, heat, and nutrients, is crucial for the production and export of organic carbon, ventilation of the subsurface ocean, and modulation of air-sea exchange. Vertical transport is highly variable in space and time, and is controlled by factors at many scales; including the largest, such as winds and ocean stratification, the intermediate, such as eddies and fronts, and the smallest, such as boundary layer mixing and vertical migration. However, vertical transport is poorly constrained observationally and a challenge for models because vertical velocity is highly sensitive to small-scale processes and model resolution.

This session invites contributions from observational, modeling, or theoretical studies that shed light on the processes controlling and impacting vertical transport of water masses and biogeochemical properties from the largest to smallest scales in time and space or which propose parameterizations of this transport. We are also interested in studies that investigate the impact of vertical transport, for example, in setting the short timescale responses of ocean physics (eg marine heat waves) or biology (eg phytoplankton blooms), on the long term implications for biogeochemical tracer budgets and storage, or in influencing the oceanic and climatic variability at regional and global scales.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Upwelling and convergences; Eddies and mesoscale processesTurbulence, diffusion, and mixing processes; Upper ocean and mixed layer processes

PS05 Oceanic interscale connectivity: larger-scale dynamics influencing coastal regions

Organizers:
Alma Carolina Castillo-Trujillo, alma.castillotrujillo@whoi.edu
Isabella B. Arzeno-Soltero, iarzeno@uci.edu
Braulio Juárez, braulio.juarez@uabc.edu.mx
Jagmohan Singh, sing0673@umn.edu

Coastal regions play an integral role in human health and economy (e.g. fisheries, tourism). Hydrodynamics in nearshore environments, such as coasts, estuaries, and bays, are strongly influenced by larger-scale oceanic and atmospheric processes, such as internal waves, mesoscale eddies, basin-scale gyres, upwelling events, and climate change. These processes can strengthen the nearshore-offshore water exchange, shape coastal ocean water properties, modify local biodiversity, and determine the path of suspended particles, such as sediments, pollutants, and fish larvae. However, coastal dynamics are often studied independently of larger-scale processes, due to limitations in sampling and modeling efforts. This session aims to discuss the influence of large-scale ocean and atmospheric processes on nearshore environments. We welcome studies that blend large and small-scale observations, regional numerical models, and theory that can adapt to different scales. We encourage submissions from interdisciplinary fields that explore the impact of large-scale physics on small scale processes or vice versa. We also highly encourage results that explore regions of the world that are often underrepresented, such as Latin American and African waters.

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry; Fish and Fisheries; High Latitude Environments; Islands and Reefs; Ocean Modeling; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Continental shelf and slope processes; Physical and biogeochemical interactions; Estuarine processes; Numerical modeling

PS06 Oceanic Insights from Seismic Oceanography - high-resolution, full-depth and temporally varying 2D/3D oceanic surveys

Organizers:
Kathryn Gunn, kathy.gunn@csiro.au
Andrew Gorman, andrew.gorman@otago.ac.nz
Katy Sheen, K.L.Sheen@exeter.ac.uk

Understanding our climate system requires high resolution spatial and temporal information of the properties and dynamics of the ocean. Targeted global hydrographic programs, such as WOCE, Argo, and a recent wave of autonomous vehicles, have greatly improved the resolution of sub-surface oceanic observations. Yet, each technique has limiting observational constraints (e.g. restricted depth sampling). Seismic oceanography is a developing acoustic technique that can simultaneously overcome several observational limitations. This technique recovers two- and three-dimensional vertical cross-sections of the ocean that extend between the mixed layer and seafloor across distances of order 100 km, whilst maintaining high horizontal resolutions of 10-20 m. Thus, alongside hydrographic data, seismic oceanography can play a crucial role in further developing our understanding of the ocean and Earth’s climate system.

The greatest strength of seismic oceanography is the synergy of mapped meso- to fine-scale structures and calculated distributions of temperature, salinity, diapycnal diffusivity, as well as dynamical measurements. Over recent years, numerous methodologies have been developed to take advantage of these capabilities. The field is now mature enough to become a powerful tool that can quantify the ocean at unprecedented spatial and temporal scales.

To encourage development of this field, we seek submissions that focus on the oceanographic impact of seismic imaging techniques. We are interested in a variety of topics, including the use of:

• seismically-derived temperature fields to learn more about heat transport
• seismically-derived dissipation estimates to reveal spatiotemporal variability of mixing rates
• legacy seismic data to address outstanding oceanographic questions
• three/four-dimensional seismic data to interrogate the 3D and/or temporal structure of smaller scale oceanic processes

Cross listed Tracks: Climate and Ocean Change; Deep Sea Processes and Exploration; Ocean Data Science, Analytics, and Management; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Ocean observatories and experiments; Eddies and mesoscale processes; Fine structure and microstructure

PS07 Understanding Coupled Ocean Wind, Current and Wave Processes through Remotely Sensed and In Situ Observations

Organizers:
Mark Bourassa, bourassa@coaps.fsu.edu
Ernesto Rodriguez, ernesto.rodriguez@jpl.nasa.gov
Bia Villas Boas, avillasboas@ucsd.edu
Alex Ayet, aayet@phare.normalesup.org

Surface currents play critical roles in the Earth System in two major ways: 1) horizontal transport and dispersal of physical, biological, and chemical properties, including pollutants, and their vertical mixing and transport in the upper ocean; and 2) they are an important factor in air-sea exchange of properties like energy, momentum and gases, and hence in subseasonal-to-seasonal prediction of the physical and biogeochemical ocean state. The interaction of surface currents at all space and time scales with winds and waves is poorly understood, particularly within the upper meters of the ocean. Recent applications of surface currents support the need for better understanding of the current profile and related processes in the upper ~50 m.

Developing this understanding will require rigorous model validation against measurements. The observational problems are two-fold. First, the theory behind 3-D structures of currents and wave breaking at smaller mesoscale and submesoscales are not well constrained by data and models. Second, all near-surface velocity measurements that are not purely Lagrangian or Eulerian are contaminated to some degree by surface wave effects. Recent developments of near-surface drifters, drones, airborne and satellite-based sensors point to paths forward to the needed observations as well as the understanding of the processes key to making the most use of these observations.

This session is expected to bring together expertise in related oceanographic topics: surface currents, oceanic and atmospheric boundary layer dynamics and coupling, observations, ocean and climate modeling, wave-current interactions, meso- and submesoscale horizontal and vertical fluxes, and transport of biological communities and their associated biogeochemical signatures and applications (e.g., marine ecosystems, fisheries productivity and sea ice formation and transport, tropical cyclones, sea level and coastal flooding, and transport of plastics and oil).

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Chemical Tracers; Organic Matter and Trace Elements; Climate and Ocean Change; Fish and Fisheries; Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry; Ocean Modeling; Ocean Technologies and Observatories; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Coupled models of the climate system; Ocean observing systems; Currents

PS08 Physical processes driving transport & dispersal of particles in the ocean

Organizers:
Michelle DiBenedetto, mdiben@uw.edu
Kara Lavender Law, klavender@sea.edu
Tracy Mandel, Tracy.Mandel@unh.edu
Nimish Pujara, npujara@wisc.edu

The transport of dispersed particles, bubbles, and droplets in the ocean is governed by a variety of physical processes. Fluid motions (e.g., from turbulence, waves, wind, and stratification) may interact with the physical characteristics of the particles, such as their shape, size, density, and material to affect their transport and dispersal in complex ways. A fundamental understanding of these interactions is needed to accurately predict how dispersed particles behave in the ocean. In this session, we will bring together research from across disciplines focused on the physical processes underlying the transport and distribution of microplastics and plastic debris, bubbles, drops, organic and inorganic aggregates, and other marine particles. Applications of field observations, remote sensing, laboratory experiments, numerical modelling, and theory, across a wide range of scales (from the individual particle to large-scale global observations) are welcomed.

Cross listed Tracks: Coastal and Estuarine Hydrodynamics and Sediment Processes; Ocean Technologies and Observatories

Keywords: Marine pollution; Turbulence, diffusion, and mixing processes; Sediment transport; Nearshore processes

PS09 Sea ice - ocean interactions at the meso- to submesoscales in polar regions

Organizers:
Camille Lique, camille.lique@ifremer.fr
Carolina Dufour, carolina.dufour@mcgill.ca
Gianluca Meneghello, mgl@mit.edu
Sebastiaan Swart, sebastiaan.swart@marine.gu.se

Polar regions are in transition, with rapid changes observed in the Arctic region and much slower, yet significant, changes observed in the Antarctic. Growing evidence points to the importance of the ocean in shaping the sea ice cover and its variability, potentially contributing to on-going or future sea ice retreat. In particular, interactions between ocean features at fine scales (meso- and submeso-scales) and sea ice could represent an important mechanism for driving this retreat. Though several studies have shed light on these interactions in the marginal ice zone, many questions remain on their nature and intensity within the ice pack where in situ and satellite observations remain scarce and are more challenging to do.

Recent and innovative observations, complemented by eddy-rich models of the polar oceans both in realistic and idealized setups are providing new insights on these processes.

In this session, we invite contributions from observationalists, modelers and theoreticians, that report on recent or ongoing progress towards documenting and investigating interactions between ocean and sea ice at fine scales in either or both polar regions. Contributions that also cover the impact these interactions have on biogeochemical and carbon cycling are also welcome.

Cross listed Tracks: Air-Sea Interactions; Climate and Ocean Change; High Latitude Environments; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Eddies and mesoscale processes; Upper ocean and mixed layer processes; Ice mechanics and air/sea/ice exchange processes

PS10 Oceanic fronts observations and dynamics across different spatiotemporal scales

Organizers:
Yackar Mauzole, yackar_mauzole@my.uri.edu
Alejandra Sanchez-Rios, alesanchezrios.po@gmail.com

Fronts are ubiquitous features found in the ocean, at which various processes may occur, all across a wide range of spatio-temporal scales. In particular, at the submesoscales, stirring processes such as intrusions and streamers may create strong spice gradients, and enable turbulent mixing and double diffusion. While oceanic fronts have been documented extensively for the past five decades, many questions regarding their dynamics remain unanswered to this day. For instance, the life stages of frontogenesis and frontolysis are challenging to observe outside very high-resolution ocean models. The temporal evolution and seasonality of interleaving features and intrusion in the upper ocean have not been well recorded either, and distinguishing between the different dynamics that can produce them is an ongoing research goal. To corroborate numerical simulations, in-situ measurements at ocean fronts are obtained from high-resolution profiles during field campaigns, and from the open-source Argos floats. To gain perspective across the global ocean, remote sensing observations help predict where and when fronts may be present, and in which regions there is a higher probability of fronts appearing. We invite contributions focusing on: the observations (in-situ and remote) of frontal features, the flow dynamics dominating the horizontal stirring of spice, global patterns and time scales of frontal processes, and the effect of these processes on the exchange of heat, salt, and energy in the upper ocean. Research findings on the potential impacts of fronts on fisheries, marine ecology and/or ocean biogeochemistry are also welcomed.

Cross listed Tracks: Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger; Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller; Physical-Biological Interactions

Keywords: Fronts and jets; General or miscellaneous; Turbulence, diffusion, and mixing processes

PS11 The dynamics of interacting internal waves and (sub)mesoscale flows

Organizers:
Anna Savage, a4savage@ucsd.edu
Elizabeth Fine, efine@whoi.edu
Ruth Musgrave, rmusgrave@dal.ca
Nicolas Grisouard, nicolas.grisouard@toronto.ca

While both mesoscale eddies and low-frequency internal waves are known to represent large kinetic energy reservoirs, closing the energy budgets of such motions remains an open problem. A growing body of research is investigating whether energy transfers between internal waves, and submesoscale and mesoscale flows may play a leading-order role in these energy budgets. Theory, numerical models, and observations suggest that certain flow characteristics, including strong vorticity, strain, and lateral density gradients facilitate these energy transfers. However, our understanding of the relevant physics and ability to directly observe these transfers is still evolving. Interactions between internal waves and both mesoscale and submesoscale currents can also locally enhance shear, which can lead to mixing. We invite contributions from observational, numerical, and theoretical studies to showcase recent advances in our understanding of interactions between internal waves and mesoscale/submesoscale currents and their impacts for ocean energetics and mixing on local, regional, and global scales.

Cross listed Tracks: Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller

Keywords: Eddies and mesoscale processes; Internal and inertial waves>Coastal and Estuarine Biology and Biogeochemistry