Biocomplexity: Multiscale Models of Ecological and Geochemical Interactions in Marine Sedimentary Environments

海底包含着各种各样的生物组合，它们编织成复杂的生态系统，它们的活动、分布和生物相互作用与沉积环境的物理和化学特征有着错综复杂的联系。它也是元素循环的活跃部位，也是一个关键的长？术语汇在全球循环的主要成分，包括碳，氮和硫。因此，生物和沉积物性质之间的相互作用可以强烈地影响地质/地球化学记录，使对过去气候和古海洋学的理解变得模糊，并使确定当前元素循环和埋藏速率的能力变得模糊。关于沉积环境中的特定过程有相当多的信息，但对于如何将它们整合起来却知之甚少。这种整合对于理解沉积物在全球环境过程中的作用以及影响种群结构、群落生态和常驻生物繁殖成功的选择压力至关重要。为了理解和预测沉积物的生物、化学和物理之间的相互作用，以及它们对种群、群落和生物地球化学过程的影响，必须开发模型，使基本的地球化学和地球物理过程能够响应生物体的活动，反之亦然。将举办一系列研讨会，汇集生态学家和生态建模者，生理学家和微生物生物学家，具有数值建模专业知识的物理和地球化学建模者，生物地球化学家和应用数学家来解决这个数字密集和困难的问题。目标如下：讨论相互作用的尺度、反馈回路、非线性过程和涌现特性，以及如何将它们成功地包含在现有的建模方法中；拓宽模型，实现在多个时空尺度上的整合；讨论新的数学方法或模型的组合；在一篇评论文章中总结研究结果，最后讨论“下一步”。研究课题很可能会成为一个或多个研究建议，或者可能是沿海沉积过程的新倡议。

The seafloor contains diverse assemblages of organisms, woven into complex ecological systems where their activities, distributions and biological interactions are intricately linked to the physical and chemical character of the sedimentary environment. It is also an active site of elemental cycling, and a critical long?term sink in the global cycles of major constituents, including carbon, nitrogen and sulfur. Thus, the interplay between organisms and sediment properties can strongly influence the geological/geochemical record, clouding the understanding of past climate and paleoceanography, and obscuring the ability to determine current rates of elemental cycling and burial. There is considerable information about specific processes within sedimentary environments but little is known of how to integrate them. Such integration is critical to understanding the role of sediments in global environmental processes, and the selective pressures affecting population structure, community ecology and reproductive success of resident organisms. To understand and predict the interactions between the biology, chemistry and physics of sediments, and their impacts on populations, communities, and biogeochemical processes, models must be developed to permit the basic geochemical and geophysical processes to respond to the activities of organisms, and vice versa.A series of workshops will be held to bring together ecologists and ecological modelers, physiologists and microbial biologists, physical and geochemical modelers with numerical modeling expertise, biogeochemists and applied mathematicians to attack this numerically intensive and difficult problem. The goals are as follows: to discuss scales of interactions, feedback loops, nonlinear processes and emergent properties, and how they might be successfully included in existing modeling approaches; to broaden models to achieve integration over multiple spatial and temporal scales; to discuss novel mathematical approaches or combinations of models; to summarize findings in a commentary piece, and finally to discuss 'next steps'. The research topic will most likely lend itself to one or more research proposals, or perhaps, a new initiative in coastal sedimentary processes.