Bridging International Activity and Related Research Into the Twilight Zone (BIARRITZ)

黄昏地带的海洋深度从100米到1000米不等。它是一个光线很少穿透的区域，人们对它内部发生的过程知之甚少。每年，海洋表面的微小浮游生物产生的植物物质几乎与陆地上所有的森林和平原产生的植物物质一样多。尽管这种有机物质在阳光充足的100米处形成，但最终会下沉，可能会将大量碳带到海洋深处，在那里它可能会被困在那里，远离大气层，长达数百年。在黄昏地带，这种物质中除少数外的所有物质都被重新转化为二氧化碳。因此，要了解海洋生物在调节大气中二氧化碳方面所起的作用，就必须了解是什么控制了黄昏地带这一巨大的回收活动。英国在这一领域处于世界领先地位，最近为黄昏地带处理碳的方式提供了第一份“预算”。英国的项目目前从北大西洋延伸到南大洋，投资额超过900万GB。与此同时，美国和西班牙目前也有类似的项目，总额为1900万GB，法国和德国正在开发主要项目。仅一个新的美国项目就获得了大胆项目(原TED)基金2600万英镑的资金，用于探索黄昏地带。虽然每个项目都涉及暮光区运作的不同方面，但通过将它们结合在一起，可能会比单独进行更深刻的分析。通力合作是一次千载难逢的机会，可以彻底改变我们对暮光之城功能的理解。因此，比亚里茨将寻求通过使用两种相互关联的方法来创造比这些已经很重要的部分之和更大的东西。它将为这些项目提供平台，以便它们会面、分享数据、最佳做法和新方法，从它们所涵盖的巨大环境中汇集数据，并启动协作，以弥补这种互动所确定的差距。它还将以身作则，通过发起代表旧的、新的、借来的和突如其来的东西的四种小规模合作，来刺激必要的四种类型的合作。这些种子玉米合作的主要目的是激励比亚里茨社区发展更大的合作网络，但它们也将显著增强正在进行的研究计划的科学洞察力：-一些旧的东西是加强现有的合作。在比亚里茨，我们与一位法国专家重新建立了合作关系，测量进入黄昏地带顶部的碳含量。--“新事物”是建立新的合作关系。在比亚里茨，我们开始与美国一位世界领先的溶解有机碳专家合作，量化这条鲜为人知的进入内陆的途径的重要性。-借来的东西是引进新的技术和设备。在比亚里茨，我们将接受一名法国研究人员的培训，他的设备可以让我们量化海洋中的“龙王”，即可能主导海洋深处物质向下倾泻的大颗粒。--“出人意料的事情”是为现有项目之外的年轻科学家提供机会。在比亚里茨，我们将为一位年轻的美国研究人员提供他的第一次机会，他将部署一种新的高科技方法来测量开放海洋中的有机碳。这些小规模的合作将利用NERC STEARD项目，作为南大洋在地球系统方案(ROSS)中的作用的一部分，该项目正在调查南大洋火地岛东南部偏远地区的海洋生物如何影响全球碳预算。这既为Biarritz提供了一个进行这些合作的独特平台，又极大地加强了对奶油冻和玫瑰的理解。

The Twilight Zone spans from 100m to 1000m depth in the ocean. It is a region where very little light penetrates and where little is known about the processes that take place within it. Each year, nearly as much plant material is produced by microscopic plankton in the surface ocean as by all the land's forests and plains. Although created in the sunlit top 100m, this organic material eventually sinks, potentially taking a huge amount of carbon with it deep into the ocean interior where it could be trapped, away from the atmosphere, for up to hundreds of years. All but a few percent of this material is converted back into carbon dioxide within the Twilight Zone. To understand the role that marine life plays in regulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere it is thus crucial to understand what controls this enormous recycling activity in the Twilight Zone. The UK is world-leading in this area, recently providing the first "budget" for how the Twilight Zone processes carbon. UK projects currently extend from the North Atlantic to the Southern Ocean and represent an investment of over £9M. Simultaneously there are similar current projects in the US and Spain totalling £19M, with major projects being developed in France and Germany. A new US project alone has received £26M from the Audacious Project (previously TED) fund to explore the Twilight Zone. Although each project tackles different aspects of the functioning of the Twilight Zone, by bringing them together a much more profound analysis is possible than by one alone. Working together there is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to revolutionise how we understand the functioning of the Twilight Zone. Therefore BIARRITZ will seek to create something even greater than the sum of these already significant parts by using two linked approaches. It will provide fora for the projects to meet, to share data, best practice and novel approaches, to pool data from the huge span of environments they encompass and to initiate collaborations to address gaps identified by this interaction. It will also lead by example, to stimulate the necessary four types of collaboration, by initiating four small scale collaborations representing something old, something new, something borrowed and something out-of-the-blue. These seedcorn collaborations will have the primary purpose of providing incentive to the BIARRITZ community to develop a larger network of collaborations, but they will also significantly enhance the scientific insights from an ongoing research programme:- 'Something old' is to reinforce existing collaborations. In BIARRITZ we re-establish a collaboration with a French expert in measuring how much carbon enters the top of the Twilight Zone.- 'Something new' is to build new collaborations. In BIARRITZ we begin a collaboration with an American world-leading expert on dissolved organic carbon, to quantify the importance of this little studied pathway into the interior.- 'Something borrowed' is to bring in new skills and equipment. In BIARRITZ we will be trained by a French researcher whose equipment allows us to quantify the 'dragon kings' of the ocean, the large particles that may dominate the downward rain of material deep in the ocean.- 'Something out-of-the-blue' is to provide opportunities for young scientists outside the established projects. In BIARRITZ we will provide a young US researcher with his first opportunity to deploy a new high-tech approach to measuring organic carbon in the open ocean. These small scale collaborations will exploit the NERC CUSTARD project which, as part of the Role of the Southern Ocean in the Earth System programme (RoSES), is investigating how marine life, in the remote part of the S. Ocean southeast of the Tierra del Fuego, influences the global carbon budget. This both provides BIARRITZ with a unique platform for these collaborations and in turn significantly enhances the understanding that will be gained from CUSTARD and RoSES.