Project: NSFGEO-NERC: Collaborative Research: Using Time-series Field Observations to Constrain an Ocean Iron Model

NSF and NERC Award Abstract:
Iron is an essential nutrient for the growth of phytoplankton in the oceans. As such, iron plays key roles in regulating marine primary production and the cycling of carbon. It is thus important that models of ocean biology and chemistry consider iron, in order to explore past, present and future variations in marine productivity and the role of the ocean in the global carbon cycle. In this joint project involving researchers in the U.S. and the U.K., supported by both NSF and the Natural Environment Research Council (U.K.), field data from the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS) region will be combined with an established, state-of-the-art ocean biogeochemical model. By leveraging the known seasonal-scale physical, chemical and biological changes in the BATS region, the oceanographic context provided by the BATS core data, and an existing model of the regional physical circulation, the proposed study will yield process-related information that is of general applicability to the open ocean. In particular, the proposed research will focus on understanding the atmospheric input, biological uptake, regeneration and scavenging removal of dissolved iron in the oceanic water column, which have emerged as major uncertainties in the ocean iron cycle. The project will include significant educational and training contributions at the K-12, undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral levels, as well as public outreach efforts that aim to explain the research and its importance.

The ability of ocean models to simulate iron remains crude, owing to an insufficient understanding of the mechanisms that drive variability in dissolved iron, particularly the involvement of iron-binding ligands, colloids and particles in the surface input, biological uptake, regeneration and scavenging of dissolved iron in the upper ocean. Basin-scale data produced by the GEOTRACES program provide an important resource for testing and improving models and, by extension, our mechanistic understanding of the ocean iron cycle. However such data provide only quasi-synoptic 'snapshots', which limits their utility in isolating and identifying the processes that control dissolved iron in the upper ocean. The proposed research aims to provide mechanistic insight into these governing processes by combining time-series data from the BATS region with numerical modeling experiments. Specifically, seasonally resolved data on the vertical (upper 2,000 meters) and lateral (tens of kilometers) distributions of particulate, dissolved, colloidal, soluble and ligand-bound iron species will be obtained from the chemical analysis of water column samples collected during five cruises, spanning a full annual cycle, shared with the monthly BATS program cruises. These data, along with ancillary data from the BATS program, will be used to test and inform numerical modeling experiments, and thus derive an improved understanding of the mechanisms that control the distribution and dynamics of dissolved iron in the oceanic water column.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

This is a project jointly funded by the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Geosciences (NSF/GEO) and the National Environment Research Council (NERC) of the United Kingdom (UK).