Ambio Special Report 10, Dedicated to JGOFS
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SPECIAL REPORT NUMBER 10, MAY 2001 ISSN 0044-7447 A JOURNAL OF THE HUMAN ENVIRONMENT http://ambio.allenpress.com JOINT GLOBAL OCEAN FLUX S TUDY (JGOFS) Phytoplankton Production and Food Web Processes • Carbon Dioxide Exchange and Biogeochemical Cycles • Deep Ocean-Carbon Export (Biological Pump) •Ecosystem Variability and Climate Change • Ecosystem, Biogeochemical and Ocean Carbon Models A JOURNAL OF THE HUMAN ENVIRONMENT AMBIO SPECIAL REPORT NUMBER 10, MAY 2001 EDITORIAL POLICY should be based on material previ- Editor-in-Chief: ELISABETH KESSLER ously published in AMBIO. Production Editor: FLORENCE HENEBY AMBIO was founded in 1972, the Science Editor: BJÖRN GANNING, Ph.D., Prof. year of the first UN-Conference on PEER REVIEW Layout: LEIF FLINK the environment which was held in Stockholm, Sweden. All papers in AMBIO are reviewed AMBIO is owned and adminis- by at least two referees. tered by the Royal Swedish All manuscripts submitted to Associate Editors Academy of Sciences and run on a AMBIO are accepted for consid- Ingemar Ahlgren, Ph.D., Professor of Börje Karlsson, Ph.D., Assoc. Prof., nonprofit basis eration with the understanding that Limnology, Uppsala University Institute of Zoophysiology, The growing interest in the sus- they have not been submitted to or Olof Andrén, Ph.D., Professor in Soil University of Lund tainable use of natural resources published by any other journal. Biology/Agriculture, Swedish Karl-Gustaf Löfgren, Ph.D., Pro- University of Agricultural Sciences, fessor of Economics, Umeå Univer- and a general awareness of global However, papers that have been Uppsala sity change issues has led to increased reproduced for very limited dis- Carl Christiansson, Ph.D., Professor Stellan Marklund, Ph.D., Environ- interest in environmental research tribution may be submitted. of Physical Geography, Stockholm mental Chemistry, Umeå University and a need for published informa- AMBIO cannot accept responsi- University Kevin J. Noone, Ph.D., Professor tion on the subjects involved. bility for the return of unsolicited Marianne Clarholm, Ph.D., Professor of Meteorology, Stockholm University AMBIO aims to serve the impor- manuscripts. 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Zehnder Research (NIVA) Swiss Federal Institute for Hans Hurni Environmental Centre for Development and Science and Technology (EAWAG) 2001 Subscription prices (7 issues; one double issue) including airmail postage Environment (CDE) Tomas Zylicz Don Mackay Warsaw Ecological Economics Center Americas All other countries Trent University Economics Department Personal US$ 65.00 EURO 60.00 Environmental Modelling Centre Warsaw University Institutional US$ 190.00 EURO 175.00 Environmental and Resource Studies 2-years institutional (2001/2002) US$ 357.00 EURO 350.00 Copyright © Royal Swedish Cover Photo: Academy of Sciences. All rights POSTMASTER: Send address JGOFS sampling in waters covered with pancake ice, Prydz reserved. changes to AMBIO, Bay, Antarctica (67S 75E), during the early summer. P.O. Box 1897, Lawrence, KS AMBIO (ISSN 0044-7447) is 66044-8897, USA. Samples were collected from the icebreaker RSV Aurora published monthly except for Australis for the measurement of carbon, nutrients and January, April, July and October phytoplankton pigments. by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Box 50005, S-104 05 Photo: Bronte Tilbrook, CSIRO Marine Research, Australia. Stockholm, Sweden and distrib- uted by Allen Press Inc. from AMBIO, 810 East 10th St., AMBIO is printed by Lawrence, KS 66044, USA. MediaPrint, Uddevalla AB Periodical postage paid at Uddevalla, Sweden Lawrence, KS. ISSN 0044-7447. Introduction to the Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS) Little was known about the role of the ocean in the global Climatologists, geochemists, oceanographers and ecologists carbon cycle during the first half of the 20th century. Although agreed that a concerted effort to study earth systems was needed earth scientists were aware that the ocean carbon reservoir was to address the growing concern about global warming. By the about 60 times that of the atmosphere, a system-level understand- mid-1980s, several mesoscale ocean programs had been success- ing of the ocean carbon cycle had not yet emerged. A few vi- fully completed, new satellite technology was emerging, and sci- sionaries expressed concerns about the potential effect of fossil entists were addressing questions about ocean biogeochemical fuel emissions on atmospheric temperature. But it was not until cycles, increases in anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere, glo- the late 1950s and the International Geophysical Year that sci- bal warming and environmental change. With the establishment entists made a concerted effort to assess the influence of human of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), activities on atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels and thus planners developed a framework for envisioning interdisci- on global temperature. Atmospheric time-series measurements, plinary research in the context of earth systems science. begun in 1958 at the summit of Mauna Loa in Hawaii, began to It took a combination of concern about environmental change, show thought-provoking seasonal cycles and increasing concen- technological advances, and political will, expressed in new trations of CO2 in the atmosphere. funding commitments, to reach this point. During the 1950s, scientists began to measure primary produc- An international and multidisciplinary program with participants tion in the ocean using carbon-14 isotopes and to make new glo- from more than 30 nations, JGOFS was launched in 1987 at a bal estimates based on the results. Their numbers (20–50 Pg C planning meeting in Paris under the auspices of the Scientific yr–1) were much lower than earlier ones based on bottle mea- Committee of Oceanic Research (SCOR), a committee of the In- surements of dissolved oxygen in the ocean (50–130 Pg C yr–1). ternational Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU). The SCOR re- The global primary productivity maps that followed in the 1960s port that followed provided the scientific justification, goals and and