Currently, the DOE Ocean Margins Program supports more than 70 principal and co- 

 principal investigators, spanning more than 30 academic institutions. Research funded by the 

 Ocean Margins Program amounted to about $6.9M in FY 1994. 



Planned Activities 



During the past two years, OMP scientists have developed an integrated multidisciplinary 

 science plan to quantify the physical and biogeochemical processes affecting carbon fluxes, 

 nutrient cycles, and ecological dynamics along the ocean's margins. This document describes 

 that science plan in some detail, including a rationale, component studies, and appropriate 

 methodologies. It is best viewed as a living document into which new investigators and 

 technologies can be woven into the larger fabric of the longterm goals of the Ocean Margins 

 Program. Although this plan is generic in nature, it forms the scientific framework for 

 melding the research summarized in this document into a field experimental program to assess 

 the exchange of carbon and other biogenic elements between estuarine systems, the shelf, and 

 the interior ocean. This field experimental program wUl be conducted in the coastal waters 

 near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, where carbon burial in sediments and carbon export (as 

 either DOC or POC) into the interior ocean, are expected to be maximum. 



Program Schedule 



FY 1995: Conduct an outside peer review of physical, biogeochemical, and biological 

 research projects and award new competitive research grants to address the field 

 experimental needs of OMP 



FT 1995: Initiate the field experimental phase of OMP at Cape Hatteras 



FY 1996: Conduct an outside peer review of molecular biological research projects and 

 coordinate this mechanistic research with OMP field activities 



FY 1996: Make fully operational the field experimental phase of OMP 



FY 1997: Evaluate OMP's field and laboratory measurements and assess the role of the 

 coastal ocean in the global flux of carbon 



FY 1997: Begin using OMP results to: (i) improve ocean-circulation, ocean-atmosphere- 

 interaction, global-change, and global-carbon-cycle models, (ii) develop remote 

 sensing algorithms for productivity in coastal areas, and (iii) plan the next 

 phase of the OMP 



FY 1998: Initiate the next phase of OMP by identifying a new experimental location to 

 confirm the representativeness of the Cape Hatteras results, or by addressing 

 new policy-relevant issues in coastal science 



