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. This document is a collection of 

 abstracts summarizing the component projects of Phase 1 of the Ocean Margins Program. This 

 phase included both research and technology development, and comprised projects of both two 

 and three years duration. The attached abstracts describe the goals, methods, measurement scales, 

 strengths and limitations, and status of each project, and level of support. Keywords are provided 

 to index the various projects. The names, addresses, affiliations, and major areas of expertise of 

 the investigators are provided in appendices. 



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. 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 will 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 



FY 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. 



