EUR-OCEANS Conference on Ocean deoxygenation

The EU initiative EUR-OCEANS invites contributions for a conference on Ocean deoxygenation and implications for marine biogeochemical cycles and ecosystems from 24.-26.10.2011 in Toulouse, France.
Abstracts submission is open until 30.4.2011.



A broad range of hypoxia related scientific themes will be covered with a strong focus being on Open Ocean deoxygenation and OMZs:
o Oxygen distribution and physical and biogeochemical controls
o Challenges of model parameterizations and predictions of O2 changes
o The past ocean: what can we learn from episodic widespread anoxia
xxthroughout the Earth’s history?
o The present ocean:
xx- Increase of coastal hypoxia
xx- Interplay between acidification and deoxygenation
xx- Implication on marine biogeochemical cycling
xxxof nutrients
o Oxygen Minimum Zones and greenhouse gases
o Change in ocean circulation and mixing and its impact
xxon oxygen distribution
o Getting into the realm of the microbial activity:
xxa functional genomic approach
o Towards new biogeochemical microsensors and networks
xxfor marine biogeochemical cycling (in situ and satellite
xxobservations; experimentations)

Links:
conference homepage
registration website
Conference Flyer
Conference Program

HYPOX second annual meeting in Switzerland (3.-7.5.2011)

Representatives of all 16 HYPOX partner institutions as well as of three of our recently associated partners (NIVA, Oslo, Norway; MfN, Berlin, Germany; and MARE-ULg, Liège, Belgium) join the second annual meeting in Switzerland. The meeting is hosted by our project partner Eawag (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology). Carsten Schubert and Patricia Achleitner at the Eawag branch in Kastanienbaum are doing a great job in taking care of all organizational issues. The meeting is held at the campus of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts in nearby Horw. We are most thankful to Prof. Stoessel from Lucerne University who arranged this for us!


Eawag's idyllic Kastanienbaum branch as seen from Lake Vierwaldstaettersee (image courtesy of Eawag).

Now that all observatories at all project sites have been installed or deployed for some time all participants look forward to an inspiring meeting with a lot of discussions on the data obtained. The core part of the meeting is dedicated to the reports from the different observatories. An additional focus is on the combination of monitoring and modeling activities in order to generalize the findings and to project them into the future. Efforts for data archiving in HYPOX and the linkage of HYPOX with the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) form another important part of the meeting.

On Thursday an open workshop on oxygen sensor technology and application takes place. The workshop includes presentations by sensor manufacturers as well as reports on sensor-related scientific activities.

A preliminary program of the meeting is available HERE.

EUR-OCEANS Conference - Ocean deoxygenation and implications for marine biogeochemical cycles and ecosystems 24-26 October 2011, Toulouse, France

This conference aims to bring together biological, biogeochemical, and physical oceanographers to discuss the issue of deoxygenation in the world ocean and its implications for ocean productivity, nutrient cycling, carbon cycling, and marine habitats. A serious consequence of global warming that is increasingly gaining importance is the decrease of the dissolved oxygen content of the world ocean. Deoxygenation and extension of the Oxygen Minimum Zones (OMZs) are predicted because oxygen is less soluble in warmer waters and also because the changing oceanic stratification and circulation will reduce the supply of O2 to the ocean interior. However, the biogeochemical contribution due to the O2 consumed by the aerobic processes (e.g. remineralization, nitrification) remains to be quantified. This deoxygenation in subsurface waters will have widespread consequences due to the role O2 plays in the biogeochemical cycling of carbon, nitrogen and other important elements such as P, Fe, Mn, S, etc.. O2 is instrumental to all aerobic life and sublethal and lethal O2 thresholds vary greatly between marine organisms. OMZs are key regions in the climatic gases budgets: O2, CO2, N2O, CH4, halogenous compounds...

Some scientific related specific issues include: What is the complete influence of the OMZs on climate change, taking into account the impact of the greenhouse gases, cloud formation and control of O3 and O2? How sensitive the OMZs characteristics are to changes in oceanic circulation associated to global warming? What are the mechanisms associated with a bio-, photo-, or chemo-degradation of organic matter (including CDOM) for the production of greenhouse gases, e.g. the switch from an aerobic (O2-respiration) to an anaerobic (via NO3, SO4, methanogenesis, IO3, Fe) remineralization?

Developing new dedicated sensors for the ocean observing system, modelling tools and understanding the key relevant biogeochemical and physical processes to predict future O2 contents of the world ocean constitute an immense challenge. The goal of this conference is to provide a science arena where to discuss the state of the art of our knowledge on all these topics and in building a unified research agenda across the full range of oceanographic disciplines.

This EUR-OCEANS Consortium 2011 Conference takes a multi-disciplinary view of the problem. Oral sessions will consist of invited speakers, all very active leaders in their fields, and will mix scientists from different disciplines within the sessions. All other presentations will take place in poster sessions. Participants are very much encouraged to present their work in the form of posters. The structure of the conference will allow for formal discussion sessions in the mornings and afternoons and informal networking and discussions in the evenings. Number of participants is limited (around 70 persons). Some grants will be available for PhD and post-doc participants.

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