halocline of much of the Arctic Ocean.
The extensive discussion also considered a variety of overarching issues. First, the question of timeliness was addressed by a large number of participants, including whether there had been sufficient prior observational and theoretical work to identify the major problems; whether there were attractive connections with more global issues; and whether the necessary intellectual, technical, and logistical resources were available to constitute a viable and effective research program. In each case the consensus for timeliness was unequivocal, and its numerous expressions all contained a high level of comfort with proceeding with a broadly based international research program. Noted repeatedly in this discussion was the pending Shelf-Basin Interaction (SBI) initiative of the U.S. National Science Foundation, which constitutes a major commitment toward a sustained multi-disciplinary study and can therefore form the nucleus of a larger international effort.
It was also emphasized that a shelf-basin research program in the Arctic is inherently international, because the long-term goal must include a circumpolar understanding, and ultimately an extension to global issues. Indeed, a shelf-basin research program was seen by the workshop participants to be a contribution to understanding and acquiring a predictive capability for global change. Such a program is also international in the sense that it will be most successful if it takes advantage of the strengths inherent in interactive international planning and execution of the scientific program. It in fact seems likely that a multinational effort will be required to fully engage the scientific issues inherent in the SBI program alone.
The need for a circumpolar perspective led to suggestions of seeking an appropriately broad forum for future discussions, e.g.,so that results from the Eurasian shelves can be compared to those from the North American shelves. In this connection it was noted that the SBI, which will initially concentrate on the interaction of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas with the adjacent Canadian Basin, will likely also engage a number of Canadian and Japanese scientists in closely related studies, so that parallel work on the Eurasian shelves will depend on major efforts by Russian and western European investigators.
Another overarching issue was the repeated need for sustained interaction between modeling and observational work. From the active discussions throughout the workshop, it was clear that this is a realistic goal for process studies particularly, but that it also needs to be the conscious goal of work oriented toward synthesizing.
Finally, there was an acute awareness of the challenges of sampling a variable three-dimensional environment covered by ice. Partial remedies exist in the application of existing methodologies supplemented by techniques and sensors that are approaching operational availability, such as moored nutrient samplers. A major advance, however, could be made by further developing and applying autonomous underwater vehicles and buoy networks to an ensemble of sampling needs within the Arctic Ocean and over its shelves. There is sufficient experience in this direction to suggest that this goal can be addressed in a realistic fashion, and that such work should be initiated in the very near future.
