The five-day workshop attracted some 75 investigators, students, agency representatives and guests. It included a mix of scientific talks and posters, plenary discussions and small working-group meetings. The agenda and detailed abstracts for talks and posters are available via the U.S. JGOFS home page (http://usjgofs.whoi.edu/mzweb/whoi_agenda.html).

The main goal of the annual SMP meetings is the sharing of scientific results among participants in the program and the stimulation of cross-project interactions. New and intriguing findings were presented on a range of ocean biogeochemical topics from local one-dimensional (1-D) models to global circulation models and from bacterial dynamics to the ocean uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2). Articles on individual SMP projects will appear in U.S. JGOFS News, and electronic preprints and reprints can be found on the U.S. JGOFS SMP web site.

Some of the most exciting work within the SMP involves collaborations among modelers and investigators who conduct field studies and experiments. For example, Robert Armstrong of the State University of New York at Stony Brook gave a talk on work he is doing with Cindy Lee of Stony Brook, Susumu Honjo of WHOI, Stuart Wakeham of Skidaway Institute of Oceanography and John Hedges of the University of Washington. He presented an analysis and simple model showing that the downward flux of inorganic ballast, comprising dust and siliceous and calcareous shells, largely determines organic matter into the deep ocean. Armstrong is currently developing a new modeling framework from this bottom-up perspective.

Several newly funded projects are expanding the focus of the SMP beyond the upper ocean to include processes that take place deeper in the water column, at the sea floor and in the sediments. Honjo and Roger Franois, also at WHOI, are synthesizing data from deep sediment traps deployed in a wide variety of ocean basins to put together a global picture of export and recycling of biogenic material in the ocean interior. Richard Jahnke of Skidaway is putting together a global synthesis of measurements of deep ocean carbon, silica and nutrient fluxes and sediment accumulation.

Other promising directions involve the application of new techniques, often borrowed from other fields, to traditional marine biogeochemical problems. Jorge Sarmiento and colleagues at Princeton University are importing numerical inverse methods developed for atmospheric models to estimate the regional air-sea fluxes of oxygen as well as natural and anthropogenic CO2. In a complementary study, Paul Robbins and Andrew Dickson of Scripps Institution of Oceanography are using physical oceanographic inversion tools to quantify the zonal transport of carbon species within the ocean.

Evident throughout the meeting was the growing reliance on the unique JGOFS data sets from the time-series stations, the process studies and the global survey for modeling and synthesis. Talks by Chris Sabine of the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL), Niki Gruber of Princeton and Robert Key, also of Princeton, demonstrated how the synthesis of the tracer and carbon-system data from the global survey of CO2 in the ocean provides evaluating ocean models as part of the international Ocean Carbon Model Intercomparison Project (OCMIP).

Easy access to the U.S. JGOFS field data sets is critical in this regard. One of the main tasks of the SMP management team and the U.S. JGOFS Data Management Office (DMO) has been to expand the JGOFS data system to encompass the models and data products of the SMP as well. Christine Hammond from the DMO demonstrated an SMP version of the live-access server developed at NOAA/PMEL. The data system allows users to create figures or download data subsets from grided datasets via the Internet. There are plans to expand the capability of the server to include discrete data as well. Although only a few SMP datasets are available as yet, we are in the process of filling out the database with results from the SMP investigators. The SMP live-access server can be reached from the JGOFS home page (http://usjgofs.whoi.edu/las/servlets/dataset).

Another major goal of the annual SMP meeting is to provide a venue for community activities. The SMP has sponsored three smaller topical workshops over the last year. Reports on the nitrogen fixation and equatorial Pacific workshops have appeared in previous newsletters, and an article on the continental margins workshop is included in this issue.

Time was set aside in Woods Hole for separate meetings of collaborative projects such as OCMIP and the working groups as well as for informal discussions on topical issues. The working groups were asked to assess their current efforts and to redefine goals achievable within the remaining time of the SMP. It was widely noted that the working groups rely heavily on the volunteer (unfunded) work of certain participants, limiting the scope of what can be accomplished. The working group structure of the SMP changed this summer with the disbanding of the satellite biogeochemistry group and the broadening of the nitrogen fixation working groups mandate to include a focus on functional groups. Working group reports will be available via the SMP home page this fall.

A successful result of working group deliberations was the identification of scientific gaps in the current SMP research program. Groups came forward with draft proposals for three more workshops. Topics would be calcification, trace-metal biogeochemistry, and aphotic or twilight zone remineralization and transport. As the SMP reaches its mid point, we are devoting considerable thought to the problem of how to meet our overall objectives within the limited amount of time and resources remaining. Among other objectives, the SMP is striving to encapsulate the improved understanding gained from the JGOFS field programs into a series of validated regional and global ocean carbon-cycle models. Meeting SMP Annual Meeting(Cont. from page 3) participants identified several efforts to develop and evaluate community models. Among the foci of these efforts are food web synthesis and modeling, regional 1-D model test-beds, and global coupled ecosystem-biogeochemistry modeling. These integrative, community efforts, crucial for the overall JGOFS synthesis of the ocean carbon cycle, will not be accomplished without adequate funding. Meeting participants agreed that high priority should be given to such system-level synthesis and modeling projects in the final two rounds of SMP funding.

This summers meeting had a notably different flavor from the previous two. One of the major challenges of past meetings was fostering interaction among investigators from a variety of disciplines and traditions. The birds of a feather tendency is a natural barrier to cooperation in different flocks. This year interdisciplinary cooperation and problem-solving reached new levels. The 2001 SMP annual meeting will also be held in Woods Hole in July.

(thanks to Mardi Bowles for her expert editorial assistance)