SCOR working groups are usually formed of not more than 10 members to deliberate on a narrowly focused topic and report their work in a peer-reviewed publication, book, manual, or database. SCOR has sponsored―alone or with other organizations―137 working groups, including the current ones.

A new working group on Sea-ice biogeochemistry and interactions with the atmosphere has just been formed and is due to begin early 2012.

Click here for details on the background of this group and proposed future developments.

Working Group 131 (WG-131) of the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) has these aims:

1) Data compilation. Assembling in a common open-access database the metadata and data of the in situ iron fertilization experiments, ranging from surface water and water column data on physical, chemical and biological parameters, to biogeochemical rate processes and incubation experiments.

2) Modeling and data synthesis of specific aspects of two or more such experiments for various topics, such as physical mixing, phytoplankton productivity, overall ecosystem functioning, iron chemistry, carbon budgeting, nutrient uptake ratios, and combinations of these variables and processes.

Over the last 2 years SCOR WG-131 participants, in particular Doug Mackie, have liased with Cyndy Chandler and Steve Gegg at the Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO) to pull together a relational database that spans data from IronEx I in 1993 to SEEDS II in 2004.

The BCO-DMO database currently contains data sets for IronEx I, IronEx II, SOIREE, SEEDS I, SEEDS II, SERIES, SOFeX-North and SOFeX-South. The BCO-DMO data base also has a link to the publicly available EisenEx data, which are stored at the World Data Center for Marine Environmental Sciences (WDC-MARE).

Launch of the SCOR WG 131 Database

The BCO-DMO database was launched on 21 February 2010 at a workshop hosted by Phillip Boyd and (cochair of WG131) and Cyndy Chandler (BCO-DMO)

This relational database resides at BCO-DMO and will enable inter-comparisons of data between experiments conducted in the HNLC waters of the Southern Ocean, Equatorial and Subarctic Pacific. It is hoped that this will stimulate exciting and novel opportunities for data synthesis and modeling, from 1-dimensional biological models through to complex 3-dimensional ocean biogeochemical models.

The database can be accessed as follows:
text based access: http://osprey.bcodmo.org/program.cfm?flag=view&id=10
GIS interface (some Iron Synthesis projects are compatible with this - others lack sufficient information) http://mapservice.bco-dmo.org/maps-bin/global/map

Scientists interested in data synthesis or modelling of the open ocean iron fertilization experiments are invited to contact the chairs of WG-131 Phillip Boyd and Dorothee Baker