Collaborative Research: The Cariaco Basin Oceanographic Time Series Program

该奖项将为三所美国机构--南佛罗里达大学、南卡罗来纳大学哥伦比亚分校和石溪大学--提供三年的支持，支持位于委内瑞拉大陆边缘缺氧的卡里亚科盆地的Cariaco盆地海洋时间序列。自1995年11月以来，Cariaco的科学目标是了解水文、浮游生物群落组成、初级生产力、微生物活动、陆源输入、颗粒和其他通量以及水柱中元素循环的其他过程之间的关系，以及它们的变化如何保存在海底沉积物中。该计划致力于为海洋碳和生物地球化学(OCB)和古气候研究社区服务，在Cariaco盆地维持一个提供岩心观测和样本的观测设施，并为研究人员进入世界闻名的独特热带大陆边缘环境提供便利。Cariaco的一个中心原则是，那里产生的数据流有助于解释海洋碳通量和全球气候变异性。理解影响下沉物质的过程是理解“生物碳泵”和将物质从表层海洋和邻近陆地转移到海底的过程的关键。由于Cariaco盆地只在浅海(140米)以上与毗邻的加勒比海交换表层水，在~250米以下普遍存在缺氧。这些条件保存了国际社会用来研究全新世和晚更新世气候变化的优良的多变沉积物记录。OCB社区认识到，由于自然气候变化和人类活动之间的相互作用，我们正在接近全球生物圈的“状态转变”。像Cariaco这样的海洋时间序列在记录和评估海洋生态系统对气候微妙变化作出反应的机制方面发挥了关键作用。事实上，研究小组已经记录了过去17年来卡里亚科盆地的戏剧性变化，这些变化反映了更大的空间和时间尺度上的变化。他们将这些生态系统和生物地球化学变化中的许多归因于热带辐合带的北迁。广泛的影响：加勒比海洋时间系列的成功归功于与委内瑞拉、美国和其他国家的科学家建立的强大合作。它有助于发展一个日益壮大的全球观测站，侧重于衡量生态过程和了解地球系统大范围变化的影响。Cariaco是一个与国际碳循环和更广泛的海洋学研究相关的IGBP-LOICZ项目。通过提供气候指标，提高以往气候评估的准确性，加勒比气候研究所直接实现了世界气候研究计划和国际地圈-生物圈计划的目标和PAGE倡议。该科学还有助于了解生态系统变异性的社会经济影响，例如该区域过去十年出现的沙丁鱼渔业崩溃和灾难性天气事件。Cariaco培育了国际科学合作。委内瑞拉资助当地科学家参与这一联合努力是继续这一计划的重要动机。加勒比为拉丁美洲的技术转让和能力建设带来了重大影响，为区域科学家提供了参与一个解决全球相关问题的项目的机会。Cariaco还让美国学生和科学家接触到国际研究社区以及加勒比和拉丁美洲的文化。研究小组打算继续积极努力，在Cariaco、BATS、HOT和各种其他OCB计划努力之间建立科学和技术联系。

This award will provide three more years of support to three U.S. institutions -- University of South Florida, University of South Carolina at Columbia, and Stony Brook University -- for the CARIACO Basin Ocean Time-Series, located in the anoxic Cariaco Basin on the Venezuelan continental margin. In continuous operation since November, 1995, the scientific goal of CARIACO is to understand the relationships between hydrography, plankton community composition, primary production, microbial activity, terrigenous inputs, particle and other fluxes, and other processes of element cycling in the water column, and how their variation is preserved in seafloor sediments. The program strives to serve the ocean carbon and biogeochemistry (OCB) and the paleoclimate research communities by maintaining an observing facility in the Cariaco Basin that provides core observations and samples, and facilitates researcher access to a unique, world-renown tropical continental margin setting. A central tenet of CARIACO is that the data stream produced there aids in the interpretation of oceanic carbon fluxes and global climate variability. Understanding processes that affect sinking material is key to understanding the "biological carbon pump" and processes that transfer materials from the surface ocean and adjacent land to the bottom. Since the Cariaco Basin only exchanges surface waters with the adjacent Caribbean Sea above a shallow ( 140 m) sill, anoxia prevails below ~250 m. These conditions preserve an excellent varved sediment record that is used by the international community to study Holocene and late Pleistocene climate change. The OCB community recognizes that we are approaching a "state shift" in the global biosphere due to interactions between natural climate variability and human activities. Ocean time series like CARIACO play a critical role in documenting and evaluating the mechanisms whereby marine ecosystems respond to subtle changes in climate. Indeed, the research team has documented dramatic changes in the Cariaco Basin over the past 17 years that reflect transformations over larger space and time scales. They attribute many of these ecosystem and biogeochemical changes to a northward migration of the Intertropical Convergence Zone.Broader impacts: The CARIACO Ocean Time-Series owes its success to strong collaborations established with scientists in Venezuela, the US, and other countries. It contributes to development of a growing global observatory focused on measuring ecological processes and understanding impacts of large-scale changes in the Earth system. CARIACO is an IGBP-LOICZ program relevant to international carbon cycle and broader oceanographic research. By providing climate proxies that improve the accuracy of past climate assessments, CARIACO directly addresses the goals of the CLIVAR and PAGES initiatives of the World Climate Research Programme and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme. The science also helps understand socio-economic impacts of ecosystem variability, such as the collapse of the sardine fishery and catastrophic weather events seen in the last decade in the region. CARIACO nurtures international scientific cooperation. Venezuelan funding for local scientists to participate in this joint effort is an important incentive to continue this program. CARIACO has had a significant impact on technology transfer and capacity building in Latin America, by providing regional scientists with opportunities to participate in a project that addresses issues of global relevance. CARIACO also exposes U.S. students and scientists to an international research community and to the cultures of the Caribbean and Latin America. The research team intends to continue proactive efforts to develop scientific and technical links between CARIACO, BATS, HOT, and various other OCB Program efforts.