Inter-disciplinary ocean research — Addressing the challenges

The oceans provide many important functions within the Earth system including strong coupling with weather and climate dynamics, providing food and energy resources, supporting trade and commerce, offering extensive stabilization for variations in our environment and being a resource for biodiversity. The need for improved coordination in ocean observations is more urgent now given the issues of climate change, sustainable food sources, natural hazards such as the 3/11/11 Fukushima tsunami with a devastating impact on nuclear power, and increased need for energy. Ocean researchers must work across disciplines to provide policy makers with clear and understandable assessments of the state of the ocean. Through an NSF-sponsored Ocean Research Coordination Network, a multidisciplinary team is addressing approaches for collaboration and issues that should be addressed to create an effective environment for collaboration within the ocean research community. This paper discusses the early phases of these efforts and some of the initial considerations.