Description: A comprehensive understanding of the deep-sea environment and mining’s likely impacts is necessary to assess whether and under what conditions deep-seabed mining operations comply with the International Seabed Authority’s obligations to prevent ‘serious harm’ and ensure the ‘effective protection of the marine environment from harmful effects’ in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. A synthesis of the peer-reviewed literature and consultations with deep-seabed mining stakeholders revealed that, despite an increase in deep-sea research, there are few categories of publicly available scientific knowledge comprehensive enough to enable evidence-based decision-making regarding environmental management, including whether to proceed with mining in regions where exploration contracts have been granted by the International Seabed Authority. Further information on deep-sea environmental baselines and mining impacts is critical for this emerging industry. Closing the scientific gaps related to deep-seabed mining is a monumental task that is essential to fulfilling the overarching obligation to prevent serious harm and ensure effective protection, and will require clear direction, substantial resources, and robust coordination and collaboration. Based on the information gathered, we propose a potential high-level road map of activities that could stimulate a much-needed discussion on the steps that should be taken to close key scientific gaps before any exploitation is considered. These steps include the definition of environmental goals and objectives, the establishment of an international research agenda to generate new deep-sea environmental, biological, and ecological information, and the synthesis of data that already exist.

Description: To enable successful management of marine bioinvasions, timely and robust scientific advice is required. This knowledge should inform managers and stakeholders on the magnitude of a pressure (rate of human-mediated introductions), the environmental state of an ecosystem (impacts of non-indigenous species), and the success of management response (prevention, eradication, mitigation). This advice often relies on baseline biodiversity information in the form of measureable parameters (metrics). This can be derived from conventional approaches such as visual surveys, but also by utilizing environmental DNA/RNA-based molecular techniques, which are increasingly being touted as promising tools for assessing biodiversity and detecting rare or invasive species. Depending on the stage of incursion, each approach has merits and limitations. In this review we assess the performance of biosecurity-relevant biodiversity parameters derived from eDNA/eRNA samples and discuss the results in relation to different stages of invasion and management applications. The overall performance of considered methods ranged between 42 and 90% based on defined criteria, with target-specific approaches scoring higher for respective biosecurity applications, followed by eDNA metabarcoding. Caveats are discussed along with avenues which may enhance these techniques and their successful uptake for marine biosecurity surveillance and management. To facilitate and encourage uptake of these techniques, there is a need for an international collaborative framework aimed at unifying molecular sampling and analysis methodologies. Improvement of quantitative capacity and cost-efficiency will also enhance their integration in biosecurity programmes.

Description: The Global Ocean Ship-Based Hydrographic Investigations Program (GO-SHIP) provides a globally coordinated network and oversight of 55 sustained decadal repeat hydrographic reference lines. GO-SHIP is part of the global ocean/climate observing systems (GOOS/GCOS) for study of physical oceanography, the ocean carbon, oxygen and nutrient cycles, and marine biogeochemistry. GO-SHIP enables assessment of the ocean sequestration of heat and carbon, changing ocean circulation and ventilation patterns, and their effects on ocean health and Earth's climate. Rapid quality control and open data release along with incorporation of the GO-SHIP effort in the Joint Technical Commission for Oceanography and Marine Meteorology (JCOMM) in situ Observing Programs Support Center (JCOMMOPS) have increased the profile of, and participation in, the program and led to increased data use for a range of efforts. In addition to scientific discovery, GO-SHIP provides climate quality observations for ongoing calibration of measurements from existing and new autonomous platforms. This includes biogeochemical observations for the nascent array of biogeochemical (BGC)-Argo floats; temperature and salinity for Deep Argo; and salinity for the core Argo array. GO-SHIP provides the relevant suite of global, full depth, high quality observations and co-located deployment opportunities that, for the foreseeable future, remain crucial to maintenance and evolution of Argo's unique contribution to climate science. The evolution of GO-SHIP from a program primarily focused on physical climate to increased emphasis on ocean health and sustainability has put an emphasis on the addition of essential ocean variables for biology and ecosystems in the program measurement suite. In conjunction with novel automated measurement systems, ocean color, particulate matter, and phytoplankton enumeration are being explored as GO-SHIP variables. The addition of biological and ecosystem measurements will enable GO-SHIP to determine trends and variability in these key indicators of ocean health. The active and adaptive community has sustained the network, quality and relevance of the global repeat hydrography effort through societally important scientific results, increased exposure, and interoperability with new efforts and opportunities within the community. Here we provide key recommendations for the continuation and growth of GO-SHIP in the next decade.

Description: Biological and environmental changes are creating a growing demand for historical and global data sets. Comparing up-to-date ecological and biological findings with historical statements has become a major part of scientific work in the field of ecology. This evaluation and comparison procedure is very time-consuming while the availability of raw data is very low. Comparisons between original findings – if available – require a lot of work from print publication to digitalization or transformation to appropriate data formats. The effective use of working capacity is a general issue and has become important, should the use of information technologies be invoked to minimize time-wasting copy and paste operations. In this paper we aim to present a working repository for terrestrial biological data. The implementation of this type of data repository will provide various services to participating scientists as long as the final aim is the publication of these repositories. Furthermore, the security and long-term availability of environmental data is an issue of increasing importance to the scientific community. Unrepeatable sampling events and any data thus obtained are precious in time series analysis. For this reason, a well-structured storage of data is necessary for easy accessibility, retrieval and comparability. This is an important issue for the community of environmental scientists. The need to construct and implement repositories should prevail against all hitches and we are therefore describing our on-going task with the primary population of this kind of data repository. A biological and ecological information system is a matter of public interest and should also be a key issue for ecologists.

Description: Silicon (Si) is the second most abundant element in the Earth’s crust and is an important nutrient in the ocean. The global Si cycle plays a critical role in regulating primary productivity and carbon cycling on the continents and in the oceans. Development of the analytical tools used to study the sources, sinks, and fluxes of the global Si cycle (e.g., elemental and stable isotope ratio data for Ge, Si, Zn, etc.) have recently led to major advances in our understanding of the mechanisms and processes that constrain the cycling of Si in the modern environment and in the past. Here, we provide background on the geochemical tools that are available for studying the Si cycle and highlight our current understanding of the marine, freshwater and terrestrial systems. We place emphasis on the geochemistry (e.g., Al/Si, Ge/Si, Zn/Si, δ13 C, δ15 N, δ18 O, δ30 Si) of dissolved and biogenic Si, present case studies, such as the Silicic Acid Leakage Hypothesis, and discuss challenges associated with the development of these environmental proxies for the global Si cycle. We also discuss how each system within the global Si cycle might change over time (i.e., sources, sinks, and processes) and the potential technical and conceptual limitations that need to be considered for future studies.

Description: Highlights • Subaqueous spreading occurs on gently inclined surfaces (〈3°). • Gliding planes could be clays or sandy materials undergoing loss of strength. • It is documented on some of the largest marine landslides. • SubSpread Database includes 32 case studies. • Contourite and glaciogenic deposits represent often the slipping surfaces. Abstract Subaqueous spreading, a type of extensional mass transport that is characterized by a ridge and trough morphology, has been documented globally but is poorly understood. Subaqueous spreading is observed on gently inclined surfaces (typically 〈3°) when sediment bodies experience a sudden reduction of shear strength along their basal plane during clay softening or liquefaction of sands or silty sand sediment. Historically, spreading has been associated with very large landslides, but many unknown aspects of these mass movements have yet to be clarified. Does spreading influences the large catastrophic failure? What are the sedimentological and morphological aspects that contribute in initiating this process? These are some of the research questions that spurred the present work. Here, we introduce a database that incorporates information from thirty-two case studies, and use this to provide key insights into the sedimentary and morphological aspects of subaqueous spreading that will assist in the identification of spreading elsewhere. We find that subaqueous spreading is most common along passive glacial margins, but is also observed along active margins. The occurrence of contourites interlayered with glaciogenic deposits is, in most cases, associated with landslides (or landslide complexes) with spreading morphology. The database shows that seismic loading is commonly suggested to be the dominant trigger mechanism, although more geotechnical observations and modelling analysis would be needed to support this conclusion. We compare subaqueous spreading with terrestrial spreading, in particular to earthquake-related lateral spreading and clay landslides. We find that subaqueous spreading shares the same driving processes and potentially also some of the trigger mechanisms that are associated with the terrestrial spreading cases. Future work will be required to address the association between spreading and its occurrence on some of the largest landslides on Earth, its development mechanism, and its potential hazard implications.

Description: Ocean surface winds, currents, and waves play a crucial role in exchanges of momentum, energy, heat, freshwater, gases, and other tracers between the ocean, atmosphere, and ice. Despite surface waves being strongly coupled to the upper ocean circulation and the overlying atmosphere, efforts to improve ocean, atmospheric, and wave observations and models have evolved somewhat independently. From an observational point of view, community efforts to bridge this gap have led to proposals for satellite Doppler oceanography mission concepts, which could provide unprecedented measurements of absolute surface velocity and directional wave spectrum at global scales. This paper reviews the present state of observations of surface winds, currents, and waves, and it outlines observational gaps that limit our current understanding of coupled processes that happen at the air-sea-ice interface. A significant challenge for the coming decade of wind, current, and wave observations will come in combining and interpreting measurements from (a) wave-buoys and high-frequency radars in coastal regions, (b) surface drifters and wave-enabled drifters in the open-ocean, marginal ice zones, and wave-current interaction “hot-spots,” and (c) simultaneous measurements of absolute surface currents, ocean surface wind vector, and directional wave spectrum from Doppler satellite sensors.

Description: In this paper, we outline the need for a coordinated international effort toward the building of an open-access Global Ocean Oxygen Database and ATlas (GO2DAT) complying with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). GO2DAT will combine data from the coastal and open ocean, as measured by the chemical Winkler titration method or by sensors (e.g., optodes, electrodes) from Eulerian and Lagrangian platforms (e.g., ships, moorings, profiling floats, gliders, ships of opportunities, marine mammals, cabled observatories). GO2DAT will further adopt a community-agreed, fully documented metadata format and a consistent quality control (QC) procedure and quality flagging (QF) system. GO2DAT will serve to support the development of advanced data analysis and biogeochemical models for improving our mapping, understanding and forecasting capabilities for ocean O2 changes and deoxygenation trends. It will offer the opportunity to develop quality-controlled data synthesis products with unprecedented spatial (vertical and horizontal) and temporal (sub-seasonal to multi-decadal) resolution. These products will support model assessment, improvement and evaluation as well as the development of climate and ocean health indicators. They will further support the decision-making processes associated with the emerging blue economy, the conservation of marine resources and their associated ecosystem services and the development of management tools required by a diverse community of users (e.g., environmental agencies, aquaculture, and fishing sectors). A better knowledge base of the spatial and temporal variations of marine O2 will improve our understanding of the ocean O2 budget, and allow better quantification of the Earth’s carbon and heat budgets. With the ever-increasing need to protect and sustainably manage ocean services, GO2DAT will allow scientists to fully harness the increasing volumes of O2 data already delivered by the expanding global ocean observing system and enable smooth incorporation of much higher quantities of data from autonomous platforms in the open ocean and coastal areas into comprehensive data products in the years to come. This paper aims at engaging the community (e.g., scientists, data managers, policy makers, service users) toward the development of GO2DAT within the framework of the UN Global Ocean Oxygen Decade (GOOD) program recently endorsed by IOC-UNESCO. A roadmap toward GO2DAT is proposed highlighting the efforts needed (e.g., in terms of human resources).

Description: Highlights: • Authors use inconsistent definitions of key terms like driver and pressure. • An imprecise wording could induce misunderstanding between science and policy. • We provide definitions of key terms compatible with the DPSIR approach. Abstract: In the marine sciences an increasing number of studies on environmental changes, their causes, and environmental assessments emerged in recent years. Often authors use non-uniform and inconsistent definitions of key terms like driver, threats, pressures etc. Although all of these studies clearly define causal dependencies between the interacting socio-economic and environmental systems in an understandable way, still an overall imprecise wording could induce misunderstanding at higher policy levels when it comes to integrated ecosystems assessments. Therefore we recommend using unified definitions for a better communication between science and management within national, regional and international environmental policies, for example the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). With this article we provide definitions compatible with the driver-pressure-state-impact-response (DPSIR) approach. Although most examples are MSFD related and thus have a marine focus the definitions are intended to be equally applicable for other systems and are usable world-wide. We suggest sticking to these definitions for an easy and simplified knowledge transfer from science to management, since DPSIR model is already accepted as a helpful tool for structuring and communicating ecosystem analyses.

Description: Biomolecular ocean observing and research is a rapidly evolving field that uses omics approaches to describe biodiversity at its foundational level, giving insight into the structure and function of marine ecosystems over time and space. It is an especially effective approach for investigating the marine microbiome. To mature marine microbiome research and operations within a global ocean biomolecular observing network (OBON) for the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development and beyond, research groups will need a system to effectively share, discover, and compare “omic” practices and protocols. While numerous informatic tools and standards exist, there is currently no global, publicly-supported platform specifically designed for sharing marine omics [or any omics] protocols across the entire value-chain from initiating a study to the publication and use of its results. Toward that goal, we propose the development of the Minimum Information for an Omic Protocol (MIOP), a community-developed guide of curated, standardized metadata tags and categories that will orient protocols in the value-chain for the facilitated, structured, and user-driven discovery of suitable protocol suites on the Ocean Best Practices System. Users can annotate their protocols with these tags, or use them as search criteria to find appropriate protocols. Implementing such a curated repository is an essential step toward establishing best practices. Sharing protocols and encouraging comparisons through this repository will be the first steps toward designing a decision tree to guide users to community endorsed best practices.