Support for the U. S. GEOTRACES Project Office

该奖项将支持美国地质追踪项目办公室的工作，以协调和支持正在履行GEOTRACES任务的美国机构的调查人员的活动，特别是：“识别控制海洋中关键痕量元素和同位素(TEI)分布的过程和通量，并确定这些分布对不断变化的环境条件的敏感性。”铁、钴和锌等微量元素以极低的浓度存在于海洋中。它们的低丰度被认为会影响海洋生态系统的健康和肥力。因此，准确了解控制这些元素在海洋中分布的过程是对海洋资源可持续管理的关键贡献。为了完成GEOTRACES任务并实现由此产生的好处，GEOTRACES正在与数值模拟密切相关的全球海洋区段阵列中进行观测，并得到分析方法持续相互校准的坚实基础和整个方案的数据管理系统的支持。美国GeOTRACES项目办公室在确保成功完成美国GEOTRACES对任务的支持方面发挥着领导作用，并在领导国际GEOTRACES数据管理和综合倡议方面发挥着领导作用。该奖项支持项目办公室人员、为GEOTRACES综合做出贡献的工作组、促进更广泛社区使用GEOTRACES产品的活动，以及探险计划和数据分析研讨会。美国GEOTRACES正在进行一项十年规模计划，以完成海洋部分的优先顺序。综合活动将解释沿着这些部分测量的TEI的分布，以确定海洋中TEI的主要来源，并在许多情况下量化调节TEI供应和清除的过程的速率。此外，还评估了TEI在碳和主要营养素的生物地球化学循环中的作用，包括微量营养素的生物可利用性及其在整个水柱中的生物吸收和再生。这些活动的产品将用于海洋生物地球化学循环的模拟，以评估TEI分布对不断变化的环境条件的敏感性。在整个拟议供资期间，建立和改进地球观测卫星系统数据管理系统将是一个持续进行的过程。作为负责GEOTRACES数据产品结构的常设委员会的联合主席，安德森将在整个过程中与数据管理委员会密切合作。近期的主要目标是取代目前的系统，即在处理数据的三个委员会、GEOTRACES数据汇编中心和组装数据产品的个人之间手动转移Excel工作簿和谷歌文档，用一个由所有相关人员共享的自动化系统，消除个别数据集的手动转移。预计开发新的数据系统将需要两年时间，因此这一过程将于2018年春季开始，以确保该系统及时可用，以准备计划于2021年发布的下一个中间数据产品。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award would support the work of the U.S. GEOTRACES Project Office to coordinate and support the activities of investigators at U.S. institutions who are fulfilling the GEOTRACES mission, specifically: "To identify processes and quantify fluxes that control the distributions of key trace elements and isotopes (TEIs) in the ocean, and to establish the sensitivity of these distributions to changing environmental conditions." Trace elements such as iron, cobalt and zinc occur in the ocean at ultra-low concentrations. Their low abundance is thought to influence the health and fertility of marine ecosystems. Consequently, gaining an accurate knowledge of the processes that regulate the distribution of these elements in the ocean forms a key contribution to sustainable management of marine resources. To fulfill the GEOTRACES mission, and achieve benefits derived from doing so, GEOTRACES is making observations spanning a global array of ocean sections in close connection with numerical modeling, and supported by a solid foundation of ongoing intercalibration of analytical methods and a program-wide data management system. The U.S. GEOTRACES Project Office takes leadership in ensuring successful completion of US GEOTRACES contributions in support of the mission and in leading the international GEOTRACES data management and synthesis initiatives. The award supports project office personnel, working groups contributing to GEOTRACES synthesis, events that facilitate the use of GEOTRACES products by the broader community, and workshops for expedition planning and data analysis.US GEOTRACES is in the middle of a decade-scale plan to complete a prioritized sequence of ocean sections. Synthesis activities will interpret distributions of TEIs measured along these sections to identify the principal sources of TEIs in the ocean and, in many cases, to quantify the rates of processes that regulate TEI supply and removal. Synthesis activities, furthermore, assess the role of TEIs in biogeochemical cycles of carbon and major nutrients, including bioavailability of micronutrients together with their biological uptake and regeneration throughout the water column. Products of these activities will feed into modeling of the ocean biogeochemical cycles that assesses the sensitivity of TEI distributions to changing environmental conditions. Building and improving the GEOTRACES data management system will be an ongoing process throughout the proposed funding period. As co-chair of the standing committee responsible for the structure of the GEOTRACES data product, Anderson will work closely with the Data Management Committee throughout the process. The primary goal for the immediate future is to replace the current system, which involves manual transfer of Excel workbooks and Google docs between the three committees that handle data, the GEOTRACES Data Assembly Center, and the individual who assembles the data products, with an automated system shared by all involved that eliminates manual transfer of individual data sets. It is anticipated that developing the new data system will take two years, so the process will begin in the spring of 2018 to ensure that the system is available in time to prepare the next intermediate data product, scheduled for release in 2021.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.