2016 Ocean Sciences Meeting

February 21-26

An important challenge in oceanography is to understand how high rates of primary production in shelf seas are sustained by supplies of nutrients, and to what extent the subsequent cycling and transport of fixed elements may result in a net export of carbon to the deep ocean. The problem requires knowledge of the physical processes that exchange water between the deep ocean and the shelf, and the role of riverine and atmospheric inputs of nutrients. On the shelf we need to understand how biogeochemical cycling of elements (e.g. C, N, P, Si, oxygen, and Fe) in the water column and sediments is driven by and affects shelf ecosystems (e.g. primary production, grazing, plankton community structure, carbonate chemistry, remineralisation, development of episodic or seasonal hypoxia) and to what extent carbon is exported from the shelf to the open ocean. Contributions are invited on the physics and biogeochemistry of shelf-ocean exchange, riverine inputs to shelf seas, shelf biogeochemical processes, and air-sea carbon and nitrogen fluxes in shelf systems, as well as conceptual or model-based research that draws the physics and biogeochemistry strands together.

• ME - Marine Ecosystems
• PO - Physical Oceanography/Ocean Circulation
• PP - Phytoplankton and Primary Production