NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS
2101 Constitution Ave., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20418
NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the panel responsible for the report were chosen for their special competencies and with regard for appropriate balance.
This report has been reviewed by a group other than the authors according to procedures approved by a Report Review Committee consisting of members of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine.
This work was sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the United States Geological Survey, the Department of Energy, and the National Research Council (through Program Initiation Funds).
Oceanography in the next decade : building new partnerships / Ocean Studies Board, Commission on Geosciences, Environment, and Resources, National Research Council.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-309-04794-3
1. Oceanography. I. National Research Council (U.S.). Commission on Geosciences, Environment, and Resources.
GC11.2.024 1992
551.46—dc20 92-34458
CIP
Copyright 1992 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
Cover: West Point, Prout's Neck by Winslow Homer, 1900. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Printed in the United States of America
OCEAN STUDIES BOARD
Carl Wunsch,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Chairman
Donald F. Boesch,
University of Maryland
Peter G. Brewer,
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institution
Kenneth Brink,
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Robert Cannon,
Stanford University
Sallie W. Chisholm,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Biliana Cicin-Sain,
University of Delaware
Robert Detrick,
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Craig Dorman,
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Gordon Eaton,
Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory
Edward A. Frieman,
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Arnold L. Gordon,
Columbia University
Gordon Greve,
Amoco Production Company
William Merrell,
Texas A&M University
Arthur R. M. Nowell,
University of Washington
Dennis A. Powers,
Stanford University
Brian Rothschild,
University of Maryland
John G. Sclater,
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Karl K. Turekian,
Yale University
Liaison Members
Robert Beardsley,
Commission on Geosciences, Environment, and Resources, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Syukuro Manabe,
Commission on Geosciences, Environment, and Resources, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
John Orcutt, Chairman,
OSB Navy Committee, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Staff
Mary Hope Katsouros, Director
Edward R. Urban, Jr., Staff Officer
Robin Rice, Staff Associate
David Wilmot, Sea Grant Fellow
Maureen Hage, Administrative Assistant
LaVoncyé Mallory, Senior Secretary
Stephen Latham, Secretary
The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Upon the authority of the charter granted to it by the Congress in 1863, the Academy has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters. Dr. Frank Press is president of the National Academy of Sciences.
The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964, under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. It is autonomous in its administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also sponsors engineering programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research, and recognizes the superior achievements of engineers. Dr. Robert M. White is president of the National Academy of Engineering.
The Institute of Medicine was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to secure the services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters pertaining to the health of the public. The Institute acts under the responsibility given to the National Academy of Sciences by its congressional charter to be an adviser to the federal government and, upon its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Kenneth I. Shine is president of the Institute of Medicine.
The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy's purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with the general policies determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is administered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Frank Press and Dr. Robert M. White are chairman and vice-chairman, respectively, of the National Research Council.
COMMISSION ON GEOSCIENCES, ENVIRONMENT, AND RESOURCES
M. Gordon Wolman,
The Johns Hopkins University,
Chairman
Robert C. Beardsley,
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
B. Clark Burchfiel,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Peter S. Eagleson,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Helen M. Ingram,
University of Arizona
Gene E. Likens,
New York Botanical Garden
Syukuro Manabe,
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
Jack E. Oliver,
Cornell University
Philip A. Palmer,
E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company
Frank L. Parker,
Vanderbilt University
Duncan Patten,
Arizona State University
Maxine L. Savitz,
Allied Signal Aerospace Company
Larry L. Smarr,
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Steven M. Stanley,
The Johns Hopkins University
Crispin Tickell,
Green College at the Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford
Karl K. Turekian,
Yale University
Irvin L. White,
Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratories
Staff
Stephen Rattien, Executive Director
Stephen D. Parker, Associate Executive Director
Janice E. Mehler, Assistant Executive Director
Jeanette Spoon, Administrative Officer
Carlita Perry, Administrative Assistant
Robin Lewis, Senior Project Assistant
NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
2101 CONSTITUTION AVENUE WASHINGTON, D. C. 201418
OFFICE OF THE CHAIRMAN
The ocean has always had a profound influence on human life and activities. It has been an important source of food and means of commerce. However, it has also been a threat to human life as a focus of war and through its encroachment onto land. In recent decades, the United States has been the world leader in ocean research, both in basic studies and research on the ocean's practical influence on human activities. This pioneering work has largely been the result of remarkably successful partnerships between Federal agencies and research in universities, in which federal agencies support the research of academic scientists and academic scientists provide advice on internal and external research by a variety of mechanisms.
However, the world in which these partnerships were created and sustained is changing rapidly. Concerns about the ocean as a medium for warfare and as a threat to national security are decreasing while environmental problems of the coastal zone and understanding how the ocean controls climate are of increasing importance. Also, major advances in understanding the ocean and in the development of technologies for observing it have set the stage for much greater research achievements. But the potential for such achievement must be set against the human and financial costs of sustaining science. For we are now in a period in which the importance of better understanding the ocean is ever more clear while the resources necessary to obtain this understanding are increasingly scarce.
To understand better what types of partnerships would best serve the United States in the years to come, the Ocean Studies Board of the National Research Council undertook a study of where marine science stands today, how we arrived in this position, and where marine science and technology appear to be headed. This report establishes a framework, in which improved partnerships between the federal government and academic researchers can sustain the advances of the past, and lead our country and the world to greater understanding of the many roles the ocean plays in human life. In their report, the Ocean Studies Board recognizes the ever-growing urgency of the applications but also emphasizes the importance of maintaining the health of the basic science on which all policy decisions must be ultimately based. Although obtaining the proper balance in research funding is essential to national security—in its broad sense—it will not be easy. The Board recommends the use of series of coordinated federal-academic partnerships to achieve a balance in funding among the agencies and a corresponding vitality in basic and applied ocean research.
THE NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL IS THE PRINCIPAL AGENCY OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AND THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING TO SERVE GOVERNMENT AND OTHER ORGANIZATIONS.
This report is the result of the work of many groups and individuals who served as participants in the study, writers of drafts of the report, or as reviewers. The study was begun under the direction of John Sclater, then chairman of the Ocean Studies Board, and completed under the OSB chairmanship of Carl Wunsch. William Merrell chaired this study during its final 9 months, seeing the report to its completion. I thank the chairmen, Board members, and other participants for their efforts in producing a comprehensive report on the future of marine sciences and technology in the United States. I find the call for new and improved partnerships between federal agencies and academia especially timely and believe that the report provides a solid base for building future programs in marine sciences.
In 1991, oceanography reached the end of an era when two major figures passed from the scene. The Ocean Studies Board dedicates this report to Roger Revelle and Henry Stommel, who recognized decades ago the kind of science that would be needed to understand the biology, chemistry, and physics of the ocean and their impact on the Earth system.
Frank Press
Chairman
National Research Council
Preface
The field of oceanography has existed as a major scientific discipline in the United States since World War II, largely funded by the federal government. In this report, the Ocean Studies Board documents the state of the field of oceanography and assesses the health of the partnership between the federal government and the academic oceanography community.
The objectives of the report are to document and discuss important trends in the human, physical, and fiscal resources available to oceanographers, especially academic oceanographers, over the last decade; to present the Ocean Studies Board's best assessment of scientific opportunities in physical oceanography, marine geochemistry, marine geology and geophysics, biological oceanography, and coastal oceanography during the upcoming decade; and, to provide a blueprint for more productive partnerships between academic oceanographers and federal agencies.
The study's approach was to document trends in resources over the past ten to twenty years and to speculate on the likely directions of oceanographic science over the next decade. The board used a number of means to gather information from ocean scientists and from the agencies that conduct and fund ocean science. A meeting on the topic of oceanographic facilities was attended by a number of agency representatives to discuss agency provision and use of these facilities. In addition, agencies that employ oceanographers were surveyed to determined the human resources characteristics of the federal agencies now and over the past twenty years.
A similar questionnaire was sent to the institutional members of the Council on Ocean Affairs to assess the characteristics of the academic oceanography community. Agency and academic scientists were brought together on a number of occasions to discuss the resources available to the field and the science directions of the field.
The board convened two meetings on the future of oceanographic science, one on the West Coast and one on the East Coast. These meetings brought together groups of oceanographers balanced by scientific discipline and these meetings were used to discuss working documents on the exciting science directions of each of the disciplines. The Ocean Studies Board is grateful to those who took on the task of gathering the information for each discipline: Arnold Gordon (physical oceanography), Paul J. Fox and Charles Langmuir (marine geology and geophysics), John Edmond and John Hedges (chemical oceanography and marine chemistry), James Yoder (biological oceanography), and Kenneth Brink (coastal oceanography). Many other people too numerous to cite individually assisted in various aspects of the study, particularly board members who reviewed sections within their fields of expertise.
The board presented its preliminary findings at two meetings of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), one of the major scientific societies to which oceanographers belong. The purpose of the AGU special sessions was to get feedback from scientists in the field of oceanography, to ensure that the board's views were representative of the field as a whole. The first special session, on the topic of resources for oceanography, was held at the December 1990 AGU meeting in San Francisco, California. The second special session, which summarized the results of the two meetings on future oceanographic science, was held at the May 1991 AGU meeting in Baltimore, Maryland.
This study was funded by the agencies that support research in oceanography, including the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Energy, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The board gratefully acknowledges the efforts of the staff of the Ocean Studies Board who labored with the board to produce this report, particularly Mary Hope Katsouros, Edward R. Urban, Jr., Rebecca Metzner Seter, Robin Rice, and David Wilmot. The editor of the report was Sheila Mulvihill.
William J. Merrell
Study Chair
The Federal Government and academic institutions have together built a research enterprise that is without peer in the world. This enterprise has been based on the concept of a partnership, where each partner contributes and each benefits. But, as in any partnership, a periodic and thorough reexamination is both healthy and necessary, if only to revalidate the original conditions of the partnership.
(p. 138 in Office of Management and Budget, 1992)