Division of Ocean Sciences - Spring 2001 Newsletter

Decadal Report Suggests New Opportunities and Direction for Ocean Sciences


Photo of Co-chairs of the Decadal Committee

Co-chairs of the Decadal Committee, Ted Moore and Peter Brewer, and editor Ellen Kappel, deliver the published report to Assistant Director for Geosciences Margaret Leinen.

Extensive efforts on the part of numerous members of our community to peer into the future of the ocean sciences culminated in the recent publication of “Ocean Sciences at the New Millennium.” The report provides a compelling description of the most important and promising opportunities for discovery and new understanding in the ocean sciences over the next decade and beyond.

Prior to this effort, it had been many years since a survey of the entire field of ocean sciences had been undertaken. The scope, scale, and complexity of the field increased dramatically in the intervening years. Numerous individual reports and reviews had been prepared during that time, but all focused on a subset of the ocean sciences. To gain a more comprehensive perspective, the Division of Ocean Sciences sponsored a “Decadal Committee” to examine and report on the future of oceanographic research over the next decade.

The Decadal Committee, co-chaired by Peter Brewer and Ted Moore, built upon four “disciplinary” reports (though each report frequently crossed disciplinary boundaries) covering biological, chemical, and physical oceanography and marine geology and geophysics. The reports had been prepared in the late 1990s with extensive community participation. In addition to synthesizing these reports, the Committee assimilated material from reports prepared by other committees and programs in recent years, and identified gaps and omissions in other reports.

After careful consideration, seven topics were selected for special emphasis as areas where significant progress can be made in understanding ocean processes and their impact on Earth and on society. These topics are:

  • The Ocean’s Role in Global Climate;

  • Long-Term Ocean Observations and Prediction;

  • Ocean Turbulence;

  • Non-Equilibrium Ecosystem Dynamics;

  • The Complex Coastal Ocean;

  • The Ocean Below the Seafloor; and

  • Dynamics of the Oceanic Lithosphere and Margins.

In looking at commonalities across these topics, two key characteristics emerge. The first is that each of these topics requires greater interdisciplinary cooperation in research. Second is the profound impact that new technologies have on executing novel experiments and capturing data from the ocean. Attention to effective interdisciplinary research efforts and to technology development and deployment will remain fundamentally important to scientific progress in these areas over the long-term.

The report recognizes both the remarkable progress that our community has made to date and the exciting challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. We in the ocean sciences community are clearly poised to make critical break throughs in the coming years. This report will help to focus our efforts. We extend our thanks to the co-chairs and to the Committee members (R. Beardsley, R. Bleck, K. Bruland, R. Davis, J. Deming, R. Detrick, S. Hart, M. Hay, P. Jumars, D. Karl, C. Lee, S. Lozier, D. Manahan, L. Mayer, M. McNutt, F. Millero, M. Ohman, P. Rhines, E. Silver, S. Smith, K. Turekian, F. Werner) for working on behalf of the community to articulate this vision of the future of ocean sciences.

To receive a copy of the full Ocean Sciences at the New Millenniumreport, please contact Shannon Hughes at shughes@nsf.gov. The report is also available electronically at http://www.joss.ucar.edu/joss_psg/publications/decadal/.