A Regional Network to Improve Understanding of the Carbon Cycle: A Workshop Proposal

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A grant has been awarded to Jerry Melillo at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA to convene a workshop to develop a plan for integrating an array of technologies and approaches into a regional to continental scale network to improve understanding of the carbon cycle. The workshop, hosted by the Marine Biological Lab will assemble carbon cycling research scientists, as well as experts in ongoing regional to global carbon cyling networks and initiatives to discuss the urgent gaps in understanding the carbon cycle and the technical requirements for building local, regional, and national-level networks designed to incorporate ongoing research and networks into a continuous, integrated, high-quality research network with real or near real time monitoring capbailites. Participants will share their experiences in expanding site-specific science to broader spatial scales, and will discuss future research infrastructure needs in light of new sensors (field and satellite) and data collection capabilities. The participants that currently use established carbon cycling networks will ground the workshop in the present-day realities of existing infrastructure and capabilities, and will contribute to a new vision for carbon cycling research infrastructure that can expand to meet the needs for a national capability for observing and understanding regional to continental scale processes. Discussion will include present state-of-the-art developments in regional methodology, sensor technologies, networking, research information delivery, and knowledge generation.Workshop presentations, discussion, and working group sessions will focus on four topics: 1) The integration of net carbon flux and key molecular indexes of regional carbon with models of the terrestrical carbon cycle. 2) Defining the set of regional networks of instruments necessary to make critical measurements and, 3) Building scalable carbon information networks: from researchers to field stations to a national architecture and 4) Enabling technologies and user requirements for data and information management and deliveryAs biogeochemical research becomes more complex and multidisciplinary, gains in our understanding of carbon dynamics can be furthered through the application of technologies that improve the scaling of measurements from local to regional to continenal scales and molecular measurements to ecosystem flux, enhance modeling and prediction capabilities; and facilitate communication among individuals, environmental sensors, research networks, and databases. This workshop will be the first attempt to design scalable national carbon cycling infrastructure that meets the needs of scientists working at local and broader scales, as well as decision-makers and educators that may require information at regional to national scales. Consequently, the discussions and working group reports are anticipated to be of broad interest to many disciplines. Workshop products will be made available to a broader community via web archive of the presentations; a white paper of the proceedings and recommendations which will be posted online; and a report outlining present technical capabilities, the design of a future carbon cycling network infrastructure, and a research and implementation plan that will enable this goal to be achieved.