Invitation: Abstract Submission for Special Session “Microbial Carbon Pump: A multidisciplinary focus on origins, cycling and storage of DOM in the ocean”

The Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) cordially invites all scientist to submit abstracts for oral or poster presentations to the Special Session 55 entitled “Microbial Carbon Pump: A multidisciplinary focus on origins, cycling and storage of dissolved organic matters (DOM) in the ocean”. The session is one of the programmes at the 2011 ASLO Aquatic Sciences Meeting ‘Limnology and Oceanography in a Changing World’ to be held in Puerto Rico on 13 - 17 February 2011.

The majority of dissolved organic matter (DOM) in the ocean has an average age of 4000 to 6000 years. These substances must be extremely resistant against biotic and abiotic degradation and/or almost unusable for microorganisms. DOM, produced via a number of food web processes, undergoes multiple transformations to semi-labile and finally to recalcitrant DOM. Bacterial/microbial processes govern some of those transformations. The specific mechanisms that generate recalcitrant DOM are largely unknown. Moreover, with limited ability to characterize the molecular structures of DOM it is difficult to discern why some is resistant to biotic and abiotic decomposition. The interaction between microbes and the production and removal of recalcitrant DOM requires further information of both microbial function and molecular level determination of DOM to assess the impact of DOM on global carbon cycles. This session seeks to develop a close co-operation between chemists and microbiologists that is indispensible to understand the cycling and storage of DOM.

The deadline for abstract submission is 11 October 2010.

In addition to the Special Session 55, SCOR WG134 on Microbial Carbon Pump in the Ocean (www.scor-int.org.working-groups/wg134.ht or http://mme.xmu.edu.cn/mcp/eindex.asp) is also planning an ASLO Emerging Seminar immediately after the ASLO meeting that will be held on 18 - 20 February 2011. It is an open meeting and participants are welcome to join the meeting.

For further enquiries about the Special Session 55 and SCOR WG134, please contact Conveners:

Gerhard Kattner, Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (Germany), Gerhard.Kattner@awi.de;

Nianzhi Jiao, State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Sciences at Xiamen University (China),  jiao@xmu.edu.cn;

Farooq Azam, Scripps Institution of Oceanography,  fazam@ucsd.edu;

Steven Wilhelm, University of Tennessee,  wilhelm@utk.edu

For further information about ASLO 2011, please visit http://aslo.org/meetings/sanjuan2011/