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Newsletter #4

Dear BioGeoSCAPES community,

We hope everyone continues to be safe during the pandemic and that we will all be able to meet in the future at international meetings. There continues to be strong interest and activity in developing an international BioGeoSCAPES program. Most recently there was an excellent series of BioGeoSCAPES sessions at the Ocean Sciences Meeting as described below.

  • There were well-attended BioGeoSCAPES sessions with great interdisciplinary talks with many early career researchers at the virtual Ocean Sciences Meeting in February. The session was entitled: “Towards BioGeoSCAPES: Linking cellular metabolism with ocean biogeochemistry (OB20)” and consisted of five oral presentation blocks and one poster presentation block and were divided into research themes as listed below and there were 80-100 audience members in each of the sessions.
    • Session 1: Global Scale Processes (Mon. Feb. 28, 9AM)
    • Session 2: Southern Ocean Dynamics (Mon. Feb. 28, 10AM)
    • Session 3: Cyanobacteria and bacteria (Mon. Feb, 28, 11:30AM)
    • Session 4: Phosphorus and DOM (Fri. March 4, 11:30AM)
    • Session 5: Protists (Fri. March 4, 12:30PM)
    • BioGeoSCAPES posters were presented on Wed. March 2: the 7-9pm EST poster session.
  • US national BioGeoSCAPES scoping workshop occurred in November 2021 virtually. The meeting had broad interdisciplinary interest with over 160 registrations from the US community over the three day meeting. Recordings of presentations are available online, and a summary report has just been released.
  • The 2nd French BioGeoSCAPES workshop occurred in December 8-9th, 2021 organized by C. Jeandel, I. Obernosterer, and D. Cardinal.
  • The workshop report from the OCB Ocean Nucleic Acids ‘Omics Intercalibration and Standardization workshop held in 2020 has been completed and is now posted. The report provides an overview of the current status of nucleic acid ‘omics approaches and proposes future activities towards community intercalibration and standardization efforts.
  • An Ocean Metaproteomic Intercomparison Workshop occurred in September of 2021, sponsored by the US Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry office. The workshop examined the results of the first ocean metaproteomic intercomparison, using samples from the North Atlantic. A total of 16 laboratories participated in the study: 9 in the wet-lab component and 9 in the informatic component, with some labs participating in both activities. The results demonstrated reproducible protein identifications and quantitation, and a manuscript of the results is being prepared for publication. Future metaproteomic intercalibration efforts will be planned as a follow-up.
  • The first legs of the AtlantECO Mission Microbiomes project involving the Tara schooner are underway in the Atlantic Ocean and Antarctica
  • The US, Canadian, and EU BioGeoSCAPES communities have been submitting grant proposals aimed at building international networks to foster the development of the BioGeoSCAPES program.

Future Events:

  • EU 2022 Euromarine (Dates TBD 2022; Zagreb, Croatia) A Pan-European workshop to further foster BioGeoSCAPES collaborations and to support their COST application. Martha Gledhill (GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research) and Sandi Orlic (Institut Ruđer Bošković, Zagreb, Croatia). For further details see the website or contact Martha Gledhill; mgledhill@geomar.de
  • Expeditions are being planned in the Indian Ocean from March to May with a BioGeoSCAPES component.
  • UK Two events to look forward to in the UK during 2022:
    • 12-13 Sept 2022, London International Royal Society meeting on Marine Microbes in a Changing Climate (organized by A. Tagliabue, T. Mock, J.Robidart, P. Sanchez-Baracaldo),
    • 6-8 Sept 2022, Challenger 150: The Challenger Society Conference 2022 in London. More info will be forthcoming.

In addition to the website (www.biogeoscapes.org), BioGeoSCAPES related science is being promoted on social media through the Twitter account “@BioGeoSCAPES”. If you have any highlights for the Twitter feed, please share them with us.

If you would like to get involved in BioGeoSCAPES activities, please contact your country’s representative listed at the link above, or one of us. If your country is not listed and you wish to be added as a representative, please contact us (Mak, Al, Adrian or Maite).

Thanks for showing interest in BioGeoSCAPES!

Sincerely, Mak Saito, Alessandro Tagliabue, Adrian Marchetti, and Maite Maldonado.

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