US JGOFS Synthesis & Modeling Project
Proposed Formats of Remaining Three SMP Summer Meetings
back.gif
back to 2002 agenda

GENERAL PURPOSE OF REMAINING SUMMER MEETINGS

The US JGOFS Steering Committe has discussed various strategies for the Summer 2002 SMP meeting in Woods Hole (July), and the follow-on meetings in 2003 and 2004. At the Steering Committee meeting last October, there was considerable discussion about just what kind of format might best serve PI needs and also advance ocean carbon cycle science.   Here we describe the general design of the remaining summer meetings.  The general purpose of the remaining three meetings are briefly desribed as:

2002  ``transitional" meeting with both progress reporting by indiv idual PIs and broader synthesis across projects
2003  Focus on products, such as a set of community synthesis papers
2004  Final meeting, wrap-up of community synthesis efforts
Feedback from SMP PIs on the format of previous meetings has been generally favorable. Most PIs want some allotment of time to present results from their projects, and previous summer meetings have allowed time for one short oral presentation per project, as well as poster presentations.

However, the structure of the summer meeting needs to evolve with the Project, and as the number of active projects declines and the SMP winds down, the emphasis of the meetings needs to shift in its balance from simply communication of project results toward stronger interaction and cross-disciplinary synthesis. The proposed design below, which for 2002 combines longer plenary talks, thematic discussions, poster sessions and working group meetings, is one solution toward accomplishing this. To remain forward-looking, we also present basic formats for the 2003 and 2004 meetings, although the structure of these meetings will certainly need to remain flexible to accommodate evolution of the SMP.
 

PROPOSED 2002 MEETING FORMAT (table 1)

Talks:  The new projects will be allowed time to introduce their methods and goals, probably during the Monday morning introduction of the meeting. We've learned from previous meetings that 5 minutes each is sufficient time for PIs to introduce newly funded projects.

To begin each morning and afternoon session, longer plenary talks will be arranged - probably around 8-9 total, to present ½-1 hour talks. Speakers will be drawn from both within and outside the SMP, and most will be selected based on the daily plenary themes. Four of these plenary talks would be used to kick off the Theme Discussions (see below).

Theme Discussions:  We propose four themes be presented at the meeting. The proposed themes of the workshop will address some aspect of the ocean carbon cycle, and ideally will promote participation from multiple SMP projects. Some examples of such themes include:

  1. SMP GOALS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS
  2. SOUTHERN OCEAN, PALEO AND PRESENT
  3. INVERSE AND ASSIMILATION MODELING OF OCEANIC CARBON CYCLE
  4. INTEGRATING COASTAL CARBON CYCLES INTO GLOBAL OCEAN CARBON CYCLE
  5. DATA CONSIDERATIONS FOR FUTURE ANALYSES AND MODELING EFFORTS (Many issues remain considering nutrient fileds, surface radiation, etc.  Satellite data assimilation, especially color, also needs to be addressed soon)
  6. FOOD WEBS ("difficult" parameters such as zooplankton grazing, nutrient uptake coefficients, etc.)
  7. RECONCILING TRAP, SURFACE AND OCEAN FLOOR MEASUREMENTS
  8. SILICA CYCLE
We welcome your suggestions and are looking for volunteers to organize sessions AND for nominations of speakers to present broad, stimulating plenary talks. 

Please send J Kleypas (kleypas@ucar.edu) feedback on:

1. which themes you would like to see discussed (either these or separate topics), 
2. recommendations for plenary speakers, or 
3. if you wish to help organize a theme session
see more detailed agenda for this meeting

The bulk of each session will center on open floor discussion. To encourage participation, major points from the plenary and related talks will be developed based on input form the SMP PIs and will be advertised prior to the meeting.

The last day of the meeting will be devoted to discussion of SMP's efforts at the Final International JGOFS Meeting (May 2003), the design of the SMP 2003 summer meeting, community synthesis papers, and issues such as educational outreach and data management.

Posters:  Posters will replace the 15 minute talks of previous meetings. Two main poster sessions will be held over two full afternoon periods. We will organize the posters according to discipline, similarly to how talks were organized at the 2001 meeting (e.g. Euphotic Zone Production and Export; Basin-Scale Biogeochemical Modeling; Global Scale Data Synthesis; etc.).
 

Working Group Meetings: Over the last two years, working groups have evolved to accommodate existing projects (CO2 Survey Data; OCMIP; Regional Test Beds); to lay the groundwork for upcoming SMP workshops (Marine Calcification); or to wrap-up results from previous SMP workshops (Midwater Processes). A few working groups also remain active in areas such as Food Webs, Continental Margins, and SMP Community Synthesis efforts.

Two afternoons will be devoted to working group meetings. Unfortunately, some of these will run simultaneously, but we will try to minimize coincident scheduling of those working groups which require overlapping expertise.
 

Other:  Those who have attended meetings in Woods Hole in the summer know that an important limiting resource is restaurants, and casual interaction can be cut short by the hurry to beat the evening dinner queue. Last year we considered having two banquet-style meals, since the cost of these is very compatible with dinner per-diem costs. This slight change in the meeting design remains an option.  Volleyball, of course, will remain on the schedule, and we will also consider a growing preference for croquet among the modelers.
 

Table 1. Format for 2002 SMP Summer Meeting.
  Monday  Tuesday Wednesday  Thursday  Friday 
am  intro 
  Theme 1  Theme 2  Theme 3 Theme 4 
  Plenary 1  Plenary 3  Plenary 5  Plenary 7  Plenary 9 
  open disc.  open disc.  open disc  open disc  final disc. 
pm  Plenary 2  Plenary 4  Plenary 6  Plenary 8 
  Working Gp Mtgs  Poster Session  Working Gp Mtgs  Poster Session 

PROPOSED 2003 MEETING FORMAT

By summer of 2003, there will be about 16 active SMP projects, with another 10 projects having just been completed. The size of the 2003 meeting will be scaled down considerably, to about half that of 2002, although the week-long time-frame remains appropriate. The sights of this meeting are aimed toward producing a set of community synthesis papers derived from SMP efforts, which of course in turn derives from the entirety of US JGOFS efforts. We recommend encouraging leaders from each of the US JGOFS Process Studies and Time Series studies to attend, to present an overview of each of these efforts, and to participate in the organization and writing of the final synthesis papers. The meeting format will be more workshop-style, and designed at facilitating multi-author papers that adequately reflect the SMP's community synthesis of major components of the ocean carbon cycle. We therefore anticipate this summer meeting will require significant pre-meeting organization. We will start soliciting ideas for these synthesis papers at the 2002 summer meeting, and will develop these through discussion via the SMP PI and other JGOFS email lists.
 

PROPOSED 2004 MEETING FORMAT

The last and final meeting of SMP will be a wrap-up of any remaining SMP issues. Five projects will be in their final year, and another 10 will have just been completed. The size of this meeting will probably be quite small (20-30?); although it is too early at this point to estimate how much time will be needed.

We anticipate that there will remain a few outstanding issues, such as data archiving, synthesis papers, etc., that will require final attention. The format for this meeting will be designed around these issues, but will certainly be less formal than previous meetings.

File translated from TEX by TTH, version 2.60.
On 27 Feb 2002, 12:20.