The 2022 CBIOMES Annual Meeting looked to the future and a welcome return to gathering in person.
Reporting by Helen Hill for CBIOMES News
This year’s meeting, marking the end of CBIOMES’ original five-year funding period, may have been our third online annual meeting but it remained a nonetheless energetic gathering with all eyes firmly trained on a near future in which we can finally return to collaborating in person.
All-hands poster sessions have come to form the core of the programming at our online annual meetings and no less this year with fully half the time given to twice-daily one-hour sessions prefaced by time in the days leading up to the meeting during which material was made available for independent viewing.
Complementing the posters were introductions to each of three (at the time proposed, now confirmed) in-person workshops planned for fall 2022 (Diurnal Processes), winter 2023 Transects and Eco-provinces), and spring 2023 (Zooplankton in Marine Ecosystem Models). You can watch introductions to each by clicking on the links above.
Rounding out this year’s meeting were two invited science talks:
Dr Sinikka Lennartz, recently appointed Junior Professor of Biogeochemical Ocean Modelling at the Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM) at the University of Oldenburg, Germany, shared “From a drop to the ocean: Modelling microbial interactions in diverse communities”
Interactions between marine microorganisms are ubiquitous in the ocean, with the potential to shape global-scale biogeochemical cycles in many ways. Global biogeochemical models are powerful tools to scale up from small to large scales, but often neglect heterotrophic microorganisms. One reason Lennartz thinks might be the huge complexity of interactions, for which traditional concepts, focussing solely on competitive processes, need to be extended. In her presentation, Lennartz showed that explicitly including heterotrophic microorganisms makes a difference: even so far as reversing the sign of the expected change in the dissolved organic carbon inventory in the surface ocean in a future scenario. You can see her talk here.
CBIOMES PI and 2021 Huntsman Medal Awardee Shubha Sathyendranath (PML) presented an invited talk “Ocean colour: our window into the marine ecosystem” shining light (pun intended) on satellite data in understanding phytoplankton biogeography. A merit scientist in the Remote Sensing Group at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, UK, Sathyendranath’s research focuses on understanding the interaction of light with the ocean biota and the consequences for marine ecology, biogeochemistry, and climate. She applies marine optics and ocean color remote sensing to topics such as the development of algorithms for interpretation of satellite data, light penetration underwater, phytoplankton functional types, ecological provinces in the ocean, marine primary production, biological-physical feedbacks in the ocean, phytoplankton phenology, carbon cycling, the use of ocean-color data in climate studies and the dynamics of waterborne diseases. You can see her talk here.
You can access recordings of all the presentations, poster microtalks, and group overviews here [login required]
The 2023 meeting is scheduled for June 21 – 23 when we look forward to returning to the Simons Foundation in NYC.