Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) http://www.iodp.org/
A new international partnership of scientists and research institutions organized to explore Earth's structure and history through scientific ocean drilling. The research program will start in October 2003.
International Marine Global Change Studies (IMAGES) http://www.images-pages.org/
a global program to collect and study marine sediment records. The overriding IMAGES science issue is to quantify climate and chemical variability of the ocean on time scales of oceanic and cryospheric processes; to determine its sensitivity to identified internal and external forcings, and to determine its role in controlling atmospheric CO2.
InterRidge http://interridge.org/
An international and interdisciplinary initiative concerned with all aspects of mid-ocean ridges.
Jason http://topex-www.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/jason-1.html
an oceanography mission to monitor global ocean circulation, discover the tie between the oceans and atmosphere, improve global climate predictions, and monitor events such as El Niño conditions and ocean eddies. The Jason-1 satellite carries a radar altimeter and it is a follow-on mission to the highly successful TOPEX/Poseidon mission. It is joint mission between France and USA. The satellite will be launched in May 2000.
Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS) http://www.uib.no/jgofs/jgofs.html
An international programme to assess more accurately, and understand better the processes controlling, regional to global and seasonal to interannual fluxes of carbon between the atmosphere, surface ocean and ocean interior, and their sensitivity to climate changes.
Land-Ocean Interaction Study (LOIS). http://www.pml.ac.uk/lois/
LOIS was a 6 year project (1992 - 1998) of the UK's Natural Environment Research Council involving over 360 scientists from 11 institutes and 27 universities. This project was the United Kingdom's contribution to LOICZ. It aims were to quantify and simulate the fluxes and transformations of materials (sediments, nutrients, contaminants) into and out of the coastal zone, extending from the catchment to the edge of the continental shelf. The main study area, embracing river catchments, estuaries and coastal seas, was the UK East Coast from Berwick upon Tweed to Great Yarmouth, concentrating on the Humber and its catchment, and to a lesser extent the River Tweed. The shelf edge study was focused on an area to the west of Scotland.
Marine Effects of Atmospheric Deposition (MEAD) http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/mead/
Concerned with potential eutrophication problems in coastal seas and the role of atmospheric deposition to these problems. Involved field experiments in the Kattegat, the results from which were used to develop predictive computer models.
MARine PRODuctivity (MARPROD) http://www.nerc.ac.uk/funding/thematics/marprod/
Its aim is to develop coupled modelling and observational systems for the pelagic ecosystem, with emphasis on physical factors affecting zooplankton population dynamics. Marine Productivity provides a major UK contribution to the international Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics project (GLOBEC).
