Publication Date:
2022-05-26
Description:
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2008. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography 55 (2008): 1945-1948, doi:10.1016/j.dsr2.2008.05.014.
Description:
Articles in this volume focus on longer-term studies of the marine ecosystem of the
continental shelf west of the Antarctic Peninsula, principally by the Palmer, Antarctica Long-
Term Ecological Research project (Ross et al., 1996; Ducklow et al., 2007). There is a rich
history of oceanographic and ecological research in the Bellingshausen Sea region and on the
continental shelf dating back to the 19th and early 20th centuries (El-Sayed, 1996). The modern
era of scientific research started with the British Discovery Investigations of 1925-37 (Hardy,
1967), and included classic studies of phytoplankton (Hart, 1934) and krill (Marr, 1962). Hart’s
report presciently suggested primary producers could be limited by iron availability. El-Sayed
(1996) dissects the subsequent history of oceanographic research up to the advent of the
Southern Ocean GLOBEC (Hofmann et al., 2001; Hofmann et al., 2004) and JGOFS (Anderson
and Smith Jr., 2001) programs. The period from the 1970’s to the mid-90’s was dominated by
expeditionary and process-level studies of particular regions and processes extending over a few
seasons to a few years at most. The Research on Antarctic Coastal Ecosystem Rates (RACER)
Program (Huntley et al., 1991; Karl, 1991) is the outstanding example of this mode of research,
having focused on determination of key rate processes as a new approach to understanding
ecosystem dynamics (Karl et al., 1991a; Karl et al., 1991b). RACER was a direct predecessor
and major influence on Palmer LTER, GLOBEC and JGOFS. What was lacking in Antarctic
waters, as in most other regions and ocean provinces were sustained, long-term observations of a
variety of ocean properties and rates, conducted in the context of hypothesis-driven,
experimental science (Ducklow et al., 2008a). The creation of the US LTER Network in 1980
(Magnuson, 1990) made this possible.
Description:
Observations reported in this volume were supported by NSF Grants OPP-90-11927 and OPP-
96-32763 to the University of California-Santa Barbara and OPP-02-17282 to the Virginia
Institute of Marine Science.
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Preprint
Format:
application/pdf
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