2014 AGU Fall Meeting

December 15 - 19, 2014

Coupled physical-biogeochemical models are increasingly sophisticated tools for studying the controls on and feedbacks between marine ecosystems and the Earth System. They have been used to address many questions on regional to global scales (10s-1000s of kilometers), including biodiversity patterns, climate projections of marine productivity, and coupled carbon-cycle feedbacks. Models are advancing in their representation of marine ecosystem processes (e.g. mixotrophy, calcifiers, vertical migration), which improve biogeochemical cycling and enable application in diverse contexts. Namely, applications within resource management and impacts predictions represent an extension of biogeochemical-ecosystem modeling that may have significant societal benefit. 

Still, many gaps remain in our ability to model marine ecosystems. The tradeoff between computational cost, complexity, and resolution are increasingly important considerations; however, numerical advances in tracer representation show promise in shifting the tradeoff space. Advances in observational systems have increased data coverage in previously under-sampled areas; utilization of observational advances require adapting models (e.g. for data assimilation) and formulations (e.g. modelling observable quantities), and represents an emerging frontier.

We invite submissions focused on large-scale dynamics, including (but not limited to):

• Marine communities in extreme or human-impacted environments,
• Novel integrations of ecosystem observations and models, and
• Ecological, carbon, and nutrient-cycle dynamics associated with previously unrepresented organisms.

• OB - Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry