The
Benthic Ecosystem and Carbon Synthesis (BECS) Working Group is aimed at facilitating communication between coastal, deep ocean, and global biogeochemical and ecosystem modelers and observationalists to identify and address research gaps in benthic-pelagic coupling. Our working group has the following goals:
- Facilitate communication and data sharing between coastal and global biogeochemical / ecosystem modelers and observationalists.
- Establish shared data protocols, including common definitions and variable names/units.
- Develop data products for model development.
- Develop recommendations for future directions in observations and modeling.
To achieve these goals, we are (1) hosting a series of broad community engagement efforts, including Town Halls, bi-monthly webinars, and sessions at major conferences. In addition, we are (2) organizing a set of smaller working group meetings to develop a set of research priority recommendations, and work together to generate data products that can inform benthic model development and model-data intercomparisons.
For the smaller working group meetings, we are soliciting comments and suggestions from the community regarding research priorities, knowledge gaps, and technological needs for improving our understanding of benthic ecosystems and benthic-pelagic coupling.
For this questionnaire, you are welcome to fill out the full questionnaire, or just a subset of the questions. We anticipate the whole questionnaire to take 10-15 minutes. There are a total of 3 pages to this survey, focused on general information, knowledge gaps at different scales, and processes, technologies, and observations vs. modeling. Please feel free to answer a few or all of the questions. We are hoping to get wide community input that will inform our research priorities and recommendations.
