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

“暮光之城”的海洋深度从100米到1000米不等。这是一个很少有光线穿透的区域，人们对其中发生的过程知之甚少。每年，海洋表面微小的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。尽管这种有机物质是在阳光照射的100米高的海面上形成的，但它最终会下沉，可能会带着大量的碳进入海洋深处，在那里它可能会被困在那里，远离大气，长达数百年。除了百分之几之外，所有这些物质都在“暮光地带”内转化回二氧化碳。为了理解海洋生物在调节大气中的二氧化碳中所扮演的角色，因此，了解是什么控制着“阴阳地带”中这种巨大的回收活动是至关重要的。英国在这一领域处于世界领先地位，最近为“阴阳地带”如何处理碳提供了第一份“预算”。英国的项目目前从北大西洋延伸到南大洋，投资超过900万英镑。同时，美国和西班牙目前也有类似的项目，总投资为1900万英镑，法国和德国正在开发主要项目。仅美国的一个新项目就从大胆项目（以前的TED）基金中获得了2600万英镑，用于探索阴阳界。虽然每个项目都涉及到“暮光之城”功能的不同方面，但通过将它们结合在一起，可能会产生比单独一个更深刻的分析。通过共同努力，这是一个千载难逢的机会，可以彻底改变我们对“模糊地带”功能的理解。因此，比亚里茨将通过使用两种相关联的方法，寻求创造比这些已经很重要的部分的总和更大的东西。它将为项目会面、共享数据、最佳实践和新方法提供论坛，汇集来自它们所涵盖的巨大环境的数据，并启动合作以解决这种互动所确定的差距。它还将以身作则，激发必要的四种合作，通过发起四种小规模的合作，代表一些旧的东西，一些新的东西，一些借来的东西和一些出乎意料的东西。这些玉米种子合作的主要目的是激励BIARRITZ社区发展更大的合作网络，但它们也将大大提高正在进行的研究项目的科学见解：“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，测量有多少碳进入了“模糊地带”的顶部。-“新事物”是建立新的合作关系。在比亚里茨，我们开始与一位世界领先的美国溶解有机碳专家合作，量化这条通往内部的小研究途径的重要性。“借来的东西”是指引进新的技能和设备。在比亚里茨，我们将接受一位法国研究人员的培训，他的设备使我们能够量化海洋的“龙王”，即可能主导海洋深处向下降雨的大颗粒。——“Something out- the-blue”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，部署一种新的高科技方法来测量公海中的有机碳。这些小规模的合作将利用NERC CUSTARD项目，该项目作为南大洋在地球系统方案（RoSES）中的作用的一部分，正在调查火地岛东南南大洋偏远地区的海洋生物如何影响全球碳预算。这既为比亚里茨提供了一个独特的合作平台，又大大增强了从CUSTARD和RoSES获得的理解。

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.