Bridging Boundaries through Regional Marine Research by National Research Council

Author:National Research Council
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Earth Sciences : Ocean Studies
Publisher: NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS
Published: 2000-03-05T16:00:00+00:00

In conclusion, the GOM-RMRP had, and continues to have, many of the key elements necessary to address the guiding questions concerning contaminant transport and occurrences of phytoplankton. These include a clear definition of programmatic goals that all proposals were required to address; the decision to selectively fund a small number of projects (rather than underfund many projects), and the emphasis on interdisciplinary research (physical, biological, and chemical oceanography) that provides the fundamental context for interpretation of contaminant and phytoplankton data. Problems arose from the lack of a long-term, continuing state and federal commitment for the RMRP. This resulted in the unexpected, early termination of funding after 5 years of what was originally designed to be 10-year project. As a consequence, there was a lack of ’sunset’ management funds needed to bring the program to an organized conclusion. Although many of the PIs continue to interact on other collaborative research projects and at planning exercises for future Gulf of Maine research, there is no impetus or funding to work on syntheses of RMRP data. Only minor funding (some from the harmful algal bloom proposals, some from a stand-alone project) was ever provided for interdisciplinary modeling. Judging from the somewhat limited participation in efforts to attain an RMRP "final product," in terms of providing data, final reports, or publication citations to the website, this program is rapidly falling off participants’ priority list. Although PIs are making good progress toward publishing the results of the individual projects in peer-reviewed journals (at least 77 publications to date), it is likely that future accomplishments will be limited to individual and small group publications, with little of the interdisciplinary synthesis envisioned by the original plan.

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