The Program Review panel has recommended that R2K strongly increase emphasis on integration of results and synthesis that clarifies/refines our working models of oceanic spreading centers and hydrothermal processes & ecosystems. The panel also suggests that future field studies within the R2K Program be somewhat limited and that they specifically target testing of such models. (see details at Program Review Info)

StCom has discussed the Panel Report in detail and we have shared our updated priorities with NSF. An email Letter describing these priorities was sent May 6 and you may download a copy of that Letter here: StCom Community Letter, 6 May 2008

Specific responses to the review Panel Report were provided by the StCom to NSF. Additional details of Program priorities can be found in this document, available for download here: StCom Responses to Panel Report

You are encouraged to share your ideas on ways we can improve the rate of integration/synthesis, increase data accessibility/communication, and/or conduct an experiment, feasible within the timeframe of the R2K Program, that will illuminate a key interface or link within the system that we are currently missing. Submit an online comment by logging in with your R2K userID and password or send email to ridge2000@ucsd.edu and we can post the comment for you.

Theme Closing: the end of 2009.

Theme Description:
Creation of the Earth’s oceanic crust occurs unseen in the deep-sea, through intrusive magmatism and eruptive events along the global mid-ocean ridge. Rare opportunities to detect and observe magmatic events at ridges have revealed an astonishing host of transient and rapidly-evolving seafloor, subseafloor, and water column phenomena. In April 2006 evidence for a recent dike intrusion and eruption event was detected at the East Pacific Rise (EPR) near 9°50′N. At the time of eruption, a suite of multi-disciplinary time-series monitoring studies were underway at the site as part of the NSF-supported Ridge 2000 program. These studies continue post-eruption and provide a unique multi-disciplinary view of the environmental conditions leading up to and following a seafloor eruption/intrusion event, and of the response of the chemosynthetic biological community to this event. Studies of these recent events are embedded in the larger context of other ongoing investigations at the EPR 8º-11ºN which examine behavior and properties of this fast-spreading ridge at a complete range of spatial (micro-regional) and temporal (seconds to million year) scales. This theme will include new studies about the nature of the physical-chemical and biological systems before, during and after recent eruptions, and about the behavior and properties of the EPR, throughout the Ridge 2000 EPR 8º-11ºN Integrated Study Site.

This page is designed to facilitate communication between contributing and potential authors and help minimize overlap in manuscript content. We encourage authors to send titles of their manuscripts both submitted or in preparation for posting as comments below. Authors may use this interface for communicating about submissions to the Theme.

Date: January 22, 2007.

SUBJECT: Ridge 2000- new deadline/procedure for all R2K proposals; URGENT for PIs

This year all Ridge 2000 Marine Geology & Geophysics proposals should be submitted to a new 15 March R2K target date. Proposals with main emphasis on Biological Oceanography aspects of R2K goals should still be sent to that division; either Feb 15 or March 15 submittals will be accepted this year. March 15 will be the only Ridge 2000 target date for 2007, and there will be a single R2K proposal deadline for all subsequent years. All R2K proposals will be reviewed by a new dedicated panel. Very little flexibility is available for the March 15 target date, due to a tight Spring NSF schedule, so please treat it as essentially a deadline.

Proposals that involve work in the Ridge 2000 Integrated Studies Sites and/or that address areas of marine geology and geophysics research defined in the R2K science plan should not be submitted to either the Feb 15 or August 15, 2007, MG&G target dates.

From 2008 on, an annual 15 January Ridge 2000 deadline is planned. There will be an R2K panel convened by NSF to review all program proposals. The first dedicated R2K proposal review panel will meet this year in time for recommended seagoing projects to be included in ship scheduling arrangements for the following year’s field season. Biological Oceanography proposals will be reviewed by the full Bio/OCE panel and will also be considered by the R2K panel.

It is important that you establish the relevance of your proposals to the Ridge 2000 Program goals and science plan (documents available here) R2K relevance should be made clear to reviewers, as part of the Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts components of your proposal. There will no longer be a Relevancy Review by a subset of the R2K Steering Committee. Instead, at each Spring StCom meeting, current R2K priorities will be discussed explicitly. A few weeks later, I will present a summary of recent progress and an updated account of program priorities to the independent R2K proposal review panel. You can help Steering Committee members represent your interests by getting in touch with them to discuss your science and relevant logistical aspects for the program.

In order to guide planning and set an appropriate scope for Collaborative Research proposals or other large projects that you are considering, please be sure to contact the cognizant NSF Program Officers, Adam Schultz (MG&G) or Phil Taylor (Bio), in advance of submission. The ability of the R2K Program to support a significant number of large proposals is limited, so take advantage of the insight available at NSF to target realizable project objectives. You can also contact me, or any R2K Steering Committee member, if you have questions about current priorities within the program.
Ridge 2000 proposals submitted in error to the MG&G target date of 15 February 2007 will either be held for the 15 March 2007 Ridge target date and reviewed by the R2K Panel, or the PI will have the option of withdrawing and resubmitting for 15 March 2007. Similarly, Ridge 2000 proposals submitted erroneously to the 15 August 2007 MG&G target date will be held for the 2008 R2K proposal submission deadline. Proposals submitted for Ridge 2000 funding that do not fall within the scope of the R2K science plan will no longer be automatically transferred for consideration in the MG&G core program, so will not be reviewed.

Recall from my message dated January 4, 2007 that funds available in the FY08 budget are about half of the full R2K budget, due to prior mortgaging by ongoing projects. This can accommodate some field programs but fewer that have significant science support costs than when we are back to our full budget. Starting with the January 2009 deadline, essentially all of the R2K funds (~$4.3 M) will be available for new projects each year.

-Donna Blackman

Best Wishes to all Ridge 2000 members as 2007 gets underway!

All scientists considering applying for National Science Foundation (NSF) funding for Ridge 2000 or closely related mid-ocean ridge research in the next several years please read on.

Changes in the way that Ridge 2000 (R2K) proposals are submitted and reviewed at NSF will be implemented this year (2007). The changes have been under discussion by NSF program managers and R2K Steering Committee members since November. I had hoped to provide information on the new procedures at the AGU meeting but details are still being finalized. This message explains the nature of the changes, so that you can adjust any plans you have for the February 15 Ocean Sciences (OCE) target date. As the specific plan is finalized later this month, I will send information with new R2K proposal submission dates and panel procedures. All such updates will also be posted right away on the R2K website www.ridge2000.org.

The main motivation for the changes is to optimize the review process so that the inter-disciplinary projects that characterize many R2K studies are considered by a panel that has the necessary range of in-depth expertise and is well-informed about current program priorities. This has been difficult to achieve within the framework of the general Marine Geology & Geophysics (MGG) review panel (with Bio representation as relevant).

I expect NSF will implement a dedicated R2K Panel to review the upcoming round of Ridge 2000 proposals. R2K Steering Committee agrees that this approach can benefit the program. NSF will also implement a single proposal call each year, as is currently the case for other special programs. This change will aid ship scheduling and other facility utilization issues that are key for much of the seagoing work we do.

The new R2K proposal deadline is expected to be set for Spring 2007. Proposals for this deadline would have earliest start dates in Fall 2007, to draw from funds in Fiscal Year 2008. Following the November, 2006, NSF Panel, R2K funds for FY07 are essentially spent out, so investigators contemplating projects for Ridge 2000 funding probably want to hold off submitting to the Feb 15 OCE target date, to take advantage of the dedicated R2K deadline that will follow in the subsequent few months. The MG&G program continues to experience significant proposal pressure from all sub-disciplines. The likelihood of R2K projects receiving support beyond the program’s funding allocation (~4.3 million dollars per year for science support, plus contributions from Biological Oceanography) is significantly reduced. By moving to an R2K-dedicated panel, the aim is to keep expenditure of our portion of the OCE budget supporting the strongest R2K science.

An additional step aims to renew the program’s ability to respond to excellent new proposals as they come in. The early R2K years were characterized by a number of important large projects, some of which have mortgaged the program significantly into the 2007/2008 fiscal years. This previous management approach allowed a strong inception for the program but recently it has limited the number of new projects that the program can take on. With the change in panel procedures will come a move by NSF to fund most R2K projects as Standard grants (block funded in the first year). This is intended to significantly reduce future mortgaging so that R2K can remain a program that is responsive to ideas that evolve with new findings.

Please feel free to get in touch with me, or any R2K Steering Committee member, with questions or comments about the new plan.

Since November, I have discussed various aspects of the changes with Adam Schultz, and we both recognize that this first round of proposal submissions for an R2K-dedicated panel will likely turn up things that need clarification. An important difference from past procedure is that proposals submitted for R2K funding will no longer be shifted automatically to core MG&G if R2K relevance/priority is low. I expect there may be some flexibility in this first round as we all work through the transition. As always, the Ridge 2000 Science Plan and subsequent reports are a good guide to the range of projects that fall within the scope of the program (all available on the R2K website www.ridge2000.org).

The R2K program is strong- I see this in my day-to-day dealings with a wide variety of people in our community as well as in the responsiveness of NSF to our science, both in terms of actual support and in our impact on planning activities within broader Ocean Sciences. I understand that there will be some wariness to this change, but keep in mind that the Steering Committee has tried to think this through carefully. We see this as a positive move for the program. It will increase the strength of our profile as R2K undergoes its scheduled major review in late 2007/earliest 2008 and reinstates a full budget each year for the post-review phase of the program.

Lets all get those papers written this year to ensure that the broader community knows about the excellent results we’ve obtained since 2001! Most importantly, this will make our knowledge available to others but it is also key for ensuring that the program review results in a recommendation that R2K continue for the second half of the initially expected ~10 yr term.

Donna

Donna Blackman
Chair, Ridge 2000 Steering Committee

Dan Fornari, Site Coordinator for the EPR ISS and the Ridge 2000 Office have been collecting information from PIs working at the EPR site this field season regarding sampling requirements, experiment locations, and upcoming plans to coordinate the large amount of work going on at this site. This information is being posted on the Ridge website: Current Experiment Coordination

The information has been compiled into an experiment feedback matrix (also posted on the above website). Please take a look at the webpage and the matrix and leave any comments, concerns, or desires regarding work at the EPR ISS on this page.

June 28, 2006:

SOSUS is currently detecting a relatively small, but ongoing earthquake sequence at the West Valley of the northern Juan de Fuca Ridge. The first earthquake, likely the mainshock, occurred at 23:21Z on June 27 2006 and was also recorded by the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network which assigned this event a magnitude of 4.4. Over the last 12 hours, 113 aftershocks have been detected occurring at a rate of 5-10 events per hour. The earthquakes from this sequence are centered (yellow dot) along the northeastern side of the valley, relatively distant from either ends of the ridge segment. This activity is significant in that the West Valley segment has not exhibited a large amount of seismicity during the past 15 years of SOSUS recording. We will continue to closely monitor this activity and will send another announcement if the activity increases significantly.

June 30, 2006:

The attached updated map shows locations of the m4.4 mainshock (yellow star) and the best located aftershocks (white circles). Activity has decreased in the last the last day to 1-2 events per hour.

WValleyEQsMap

Information obtained by R/V Knorr cruise Apr 24-26, 2006, and during an ongoing R/V New Horizon cruise (on site May 10~17) indicates that a very recent seafloor eruption has occurred at the EPR 9N Integrated Studies Site (ISS).
See overview of the initial findings and information sent from New Horizon.

A second response cruise is now scheduled on Atlantis in late June. Eight Alvin dives are confirmed for this cruise and discussion of dive and night program activities is currently underway. All researchers are invited to take part in this discussion- input from investigators with previous main experience at other sites is welcome.

An explanation of the process for planning the Atlantis cruise in June was sent to the community May 3 email
Karen Von Damm is leading discussion of science priorities and cruise objectives. Please submit a comment here or email it to ridge2000@ucsd.edu and we can post it for you. Time is very short so please provide your input right away so that, as a group, we can design a plan that will optimize the dataset obtained in this very important early time period following the eruption.
If your comment has related detailed information that you would like to make available, R2K office can post that for you (send email to ridge2000@ucsd.edu with a PDF attachment). It will be linked here with title that indicates your name and comment number.

BartlettInfo (Comment #3)

HardyInfo (Comment #8)

RubinInfo (Comment #12)

Thank you for your participation in this online discussion! Your comments on key science that could be achieved at an observatory on the East Pacific Rise (9N) versus on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MoMAR) were an important part of Steering Committee considerations for the revised recommendation. That document R2K OOI recommendation was provided to the Global STAC on Monday, May 1.

April 18 Draft Recommendation. Additional info at April4 email.

To use this application, such as adding new posts or comments, you are required to log in using your Ridge 2000 membership information.