FUTURE DIRECTIONS: 



THE CONTINENTAL OCEAN MARGINS 



FLUX STUDY 



Several DOE-sponsored investigators also are 

 involved in planning for the Global Ocean Flux Study, 

 a major national oceanographic program, with the Na- 

 tional Science Foundation as lead Federal agency. The 

 GOFS planning document defines the program's over- 

 all goal as "understanding the processes controlling 

 marine biogeochemical cycling at regional, basin- 

 wide, and global spatial scales, and at time scales from 

 interannual to decadal." This goal cannot be achieved 

 without substantial effort in analyzing continental mar- 

 gin processes, since these control important phases of 

 the global cycle. Recent work shows that continental 

 shelf processes are intimately coupled with processes 

 over the continental slope and with boundary currents 

 such as the Gulf Stream and California Current. Taken 

 together, these "continental margin processes" thus are 

 important elements of many global-scale phenomena. 

 The GOFS program has been initiated with a coor- 

 dinated international series of open ocean studies in 

 the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. The Continental 

 Margins part of the program will be defined in a 

 workshop in early 1989. In early 1991, DOE will an- 

 nounce in the Federal Register notice of our intent to 

 support COMFS-type research in 1992. 



The Continental Ocean Margins Flux 

 Study Goals and Objectives 



* 



The Continental Ocean Margins Flux Study 

 (COMFS) is DOE's program within the framework of 

 the overall GOFS project. COMFS is based on DOE's 

 Coastal Ocean Margins Program, which can be seen as 

 the major contributor in understanding the dynamics 

 between the continental margins and the open ocean 

 in the elucidation of biogeochemical cycling in the 

 marine system. The COMFS goal is to understand the 

 role of margin processes in the global biogeochemical 

 cycle; this is a subset of the much broader GOFS 

 program. Specific objectives of COMFS are: 



• To identify sources and sinks of substances 

 important to global biogeochemical cycles 

 within the continental margins 



• To quantify and model the fluxes of these 

 materials between the continental margins 

 and ocean interiors 



• To identify and quantify rates of biological 

 and geochemical transformations of impor- 

 tance to the global cycle which take place on 

 the continental margins. 



The COMFS Plan 



The initiation of a concerted effort to under- 

 stand global scale fluxes from the continental margins 

 to the deep ocean is a natural outgrowth of DOE-sup- 

 ported regional marine research. COMFS will apply 

 research team strengths and focuses to an interagency 

 and international program addressing national and 

 global issues. 



Under COMFS, the two East Coast programs 

 will be combined and focused on whether the main 

 route of material removal is at major topographic fea- 

 tures such as Cape Hatteras and Cape Canaveral. Joint 

 experiments with other agencies will focus on the 

 Capes to test the hypothesis that they are the major dis- 

 charge points along the East Coast. Biological produc- 

 tivity in slope water will be investigated, quantified, 

 and related to nutrient supply, and material export 

 from this region by the Gulf Stream will be determined. 



CaBS will be extended to encompass all deep 

 basins from San Diego to Point Conception and to 

 reach seaward for a distance of 200 km across the 

 California Current system. Where previous emphasis 

 was on vertical transport and deposition, COMFS 

 studies will concentrate on horizontal transport rates. 

 Thus, COMFS research will examine important ques- 

 tions such as carbon export from the shelf into an east- 

 ern boundary current system and sources, routes, and 

 rates of nutrient supply and sedimentation and of 

 oxygen depletion in coastal basins in a global context. 

 A major effort will be the interdisciplinary modeling of 

 the carbon, oxygen, and nutrient cycles of this West 

 Coast continental margin. 



Coastal Ocean Margins Program 



18 



December 1988 



