Working Plans for the Workshop

This document will not be finalized until the workshop is over, so your suggestions are solicited earnestly. Please e-mail them directly to Pete Jumars and Mark Hay.

First plenary and meeting preparation by all participants

The first plenary session will comprise a brief welcome and discussion of goals, followed by an introduction to the assembled skills and opinions in the form of five-minute (maximum) presentations from each attendee. Each participant is asked to bring six overhead transparencies (plus one set of plain-paper photocopies of each, for a total of twelve sheets) with what they believe to be the three most significant accomplishments in the field over the last three decades and the three most exciting prospects for the next two decades of research. Of course we are as interested in the reasons as in the topics selected. During the first morning's plenary, each attendee will be given the opportunity to present one of the accomplishments, with the rule that they should go to their second and third choices (indicating that they have done so) unless they have substantial new twists or justifications on topics already treated. Later speakers may pass or ad lib if all their prepared materials have been covered to their satisfaction. The order within groups will be arbitrary but will proceed by groups as:

• Rapporteurs

• General Attendees

• White-Paper Authors

• Steering Committee Members

• Co-Chairs

During the first evening session, we will break into four groups working on the same task in parallel. That task is to rank order, in terms of significance, the morning's accumulated list of past accomplishments in the field. The most important part of that task is to make explicit the reasons for the rank ordering. Each group will select a rapporteur who will present the group's conclusions at Tuesday morning's plenary.

Initial working groups

By intent the headings do not correspond to those of the white papers. A primary goal of the entire workshop is to assure that we have not missed good ideas, so the working groups that meet for the first time on Tuesday will cross cut the white papers. Lists of topics given below are intended to prime the pump, not to be exhaustive. Each topic should cover the full spectrum of time scales from milliseconds and micrometers in nutrient and information exchanges by microbes to evolution in the context of an inconstant planetary environment. Each group should consider needs for predictive theory, descriptive models, laboratory methods, observational capabilities in the field and data assimilation. Each group should consider both ecological and oceanographic perspectives where the two might differ and step outside both when profitable. Both typical and "extreme" environments should be discussed explicitly. Where, when and how could the rate of advance in understanding be increased? What infrastructure will be needed?

1. Functional significance of biological diversity in biogeochemical dynamics

Rapporteur JOHN CULLEN

• Number and identity of compartments in realistic models

• Aggregation errors

• Changes in functional significance with scale (micrometers and milliseconds of microbial nutrient exchanges to inter-annual variations to millennia of geochemically driven and geochemistry-driving evolution)

• Similarities and differences among environments and geochemicals considered

• Environment-flux-organism interactions and feedbacks

2. Functional ecology (inclusive of the subjects treated by the journal of the same name published by the British Ecological Society)

Rapporteur JEFF LEVINTON

• Behavior in the context of environmental, morphological and physiological constraints

• Strategies and tactics of organisms as functions of environmental variables

• Evolutionary constraints

• Relevant time scales for strategies and tactics

• Genotypic and phenotypic variability

• Unique features of functional ecology in aquatic environments in general and in the sea in particular

3. Structuring dynamics of biological assemblages

Rapporteur STEVE GAINES

• Explicit and implicit roles of organism-organism interactions

• Modulation of interactions by environmental features

• Coevolution

• Predictability of community structure and function

• Utility and limits of classical and novel approaches

• How structuring in the sea differs from structuring in terrestrial and freshwater habitats

4. Human impacts and habitat linkages

Rapporteuse MANDY JOYE

• Insights into the functioning of marine ecosystems from the history of human impacts

• Basic research needed to understand timing and location of noxious blooms

• Testable predictions about future (unintended) species introductions

• Extent of the perturbation from both top-down (fish harvest) and bottom-up (eutrophication) effects

Time	Monday 2 March	Tuesday 3 March	Wednesday 4 March	Thursday 5 March	Friday 6 March
Mornings 0800-1200, with break at 1000	Welcome/goals/approach; individual 5-min presentations on past accomplishments in the discipline	Plenary summary of past evening's conclusions from each working group; plenary discussion and consensus building; convene four primary working groups described above	Rapporteurs distribute and summarize working-group progress on listing and prioritizing ideas for future research; plenary discussion of focus and coverage; working groups reconvene	Plenary distribution, presentation and discussion of working-group conclusions; consensus building; break into new groups to be defined	Rapporteurs distribute and summarize products; plenary discussion of overall conclusions, gaps and further needs within a future interdisciplinary workshop planned by NSF
1200	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Workshop ends at 1200 except for rapporteurs and co-chairs
1300-1900	Small groups	Small groups	Small groups	Small groups
1900-2200	Four working groups in parallel rank order past accomplisments in the discpline in terms of their significance	Four primary working groups reconvene	Four working groups continue	Working groups complete second efforts

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