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Program Review Information

1. Recommendations of the review panel

2. NSF cover letter

3. Letter from the R2K Chair

4. Steering Committee Community Letter, May 6, 2008

5. Steering Committee Response to the Panel Report

Table of Contents

1. Program overview and highlights of Ridge 2000 research

2. Brief review of the first phase of Ridge 2000 research (2002-2007)

3. Plan for the Next Phase of Program Research (2008-2012)

4. Education and Public Outreach

5. Program Operations

6. Documentation of Impacts

Appendices

A1: Publication/citation listings

A2: List of students and postdocs educated within the Program

A3: EPO Publications

A4: PI Summaries

A5: Additional References

Group photo from the 2006 Ridge Theoretical Institute Field Trip in Mammoth Lakes, CA. Courtesy of Maya Tolstoy.

5. PROGRAM OPERATIONS

5.1 Community Participation

R2K is community-driven, with open meetings designed and conducted on a regular basis as a means to promote discussion and research planning at the grass roots level. Access to breaking results (often from work that is not yet published) at such meetings provides ideas to both new and long-term investigators for possible new research opportunities. Consensus points for research coordination are written up in workshop reports drafted by meeting organizers, circulated for participant comment, and then a final version is made available to the full community via web download. Community members at workshops develop implementation plans for coordinated (both scientifically and logistically) work at ISS. Individual researchers are also encouraged to propose work geared toward understanding the interplay between different components of the spreading/hydrothermal system. Major workshops include a poster session that allows all participants, including students, to present and discuss their current relevant research.

A 15-member Steering Committee (StCom) strives to represent the spectrum of community interests when setting program priorities. StCom has a Chair who also oversees an Executive Committee (ExCom) and the R2K Office. ExCom has 3 members who work with the Chair to recognize opportunities or areas of concern for the program, and to initiate/guide StCom and/or community discussions. Both ExCom and StCom conduct business via email, phone and bi-annual meetings. Prior to StCom meetings, input from the full community is solicited. Response to such calls can be significant if a notable issue is on the table. More commonly thus far, StCom develops a draft plan for an evolving aspect of the program during a bi-annual meeting, posts the draft for community comment for a set period, and then adjustments are made for a final plan, if warranted based on input and subsequent StCom discussion.

5.2 The R2K Office

The R2K Office serves as a central information base, distributing a variety of science, agency, and outreach news to and from community members. Information, including announcements of all R2K-relevant meetings, is dispersed in a variety of formats: website News features; R2K Weekly Log (email to a list of subscribers (currently numbering 1234) that are a major portion (97.5%) of our full member list (currently 1265)); an annual newsletter (R2K Events) that is produced and distributed by the office; and occasionally via notices sent to the InterRidge mailing list.

The R2K office staff is composed of the chair, a science coordinator, an administrative specialist, an education and outreach co-coordinator(s), and a part-time web specialist. The staff work together on all aspects of the Program. Approximately every three years, the Chair position rotates and the Office moves the new Chair's institution.

The Office maintains and continually updates the Ridge 2000 website (www.ridge2000.org). The website is a key information source for the R2K community, reporting recent news and events and providing program background, proposal preparation information, an archive of all past meeting and workshop reports and free access to R2K Events newsletters, and lists of all current and past funded projects. The website is used for real-time discussions on issues of immediate concern. In addition to these functions, the website also contains sections on education and outreach as well as a separate portal that is dedicated to bringing Ridge science to public audiences (VentureDeepOcean).

The office plays the major role in organizing workshops and community meetings including venue selection, registration, on-site logistical support, collection/posting of abstracts/presentations, etc. The R2K website is used to advertise meetings and workshops and also for online meeting registration.

The Program Office maintains an online bibliographic database of references (http://www.ridge2000.org/science/iss/references.php) that are a direct result of and are relevant to R2K science. This database is divided up into separate files for each Integrated Studies Site, with an additional file for references that reach beyond a single ISS. These databases are updated continually, are publicly accessible, and references are exportable from the database in Endnote formats. The R2K reference database constitutes an excellent resource for researchers just beginning to work at a particular ISS. Currently, there are over 900 references in the database.

5.3 R2K Data Portal

The R2K Data Portal system includes an expedition metadata catalog, which provides information on field programs (who, what, when and where), geophysical and sample data inventories, relevant metadata and links to download associated data files. Rather than duplicate data holdings at other established repositories, the system is designed to link to existing centers and provides a framework for a broader distributed data system. A suite of cruise metadata forms were designed early in the development of the R2K Data Portal, which are a first attempt to standardize cruise metadata for marine geoscience data acquisition across different ships within UNOLS. To accommodate the different needs of scientists for accessing data, the Data Portal provides two different data access tools; a text-based search tool (browser based) for researchers wanting, for example, to find specific data sets of interest or all data from a cruise or region; and a graphical application, GeoMapApp, to visualize and explore data holdings in a map interface. GeoMapApp was initiated as a geobrowser for use with trackline and gridded geophysical data but has been modified to provide access to R2K data sets by selecting the ISS of interest through the menu options. For each ISS, available sonar datasets (multi-resolution bathymetry, side-scan), Alvin and Jason tracks and near bottom images can be visualized using GeoMapApp, as well as locations of all samples and stations from R2K funded programs. GeoMapApp also interfaces with PetDB, so that published rock analyses for samples collected within the displayed map are accessible. The Data Portal also provides options for visualizing and accessing these same R2K data sets using GoogleEarth. Web services, which conform to the specifications of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), are also being developed to serve a variety of R2K data holdings. Through these services, the R2K community can now access bathymetry, sample and station information for the ISS through a growing range of data visualization and analysis tools (e.g. ArcGIS, NASA World Wind, OpenLayers etc) in addition to GeoMapApp and GoogleEarth.

Data holdings for the R2K ISS: Obtaining data for the R2K Data Portal has required the active participation and involvement of R2K scientists and a significant success of the program has been the close to 100% participation achieved. Ridge 2000 has fully to partially supported 27 cruises since field programs began in 2004. Complete cruise, data acquisition, navigation and field data for all of these cruises are currently available through the Data Portal. Partial information for an additional ~100 cruises, which pre-date the R2K program, but fall within the three ISS can also be accessed. Data from R2K cruises include: bathymetry, side-scan sonar, multi-channel seismic data, magnetotelluric data, earthquake catalogs, water column MAPR and CTD data, temperature probe data, biological species lists, TowCam photographic transects, Alvin and Jason navigation and access to bottom photography, rock, fluid, sediment and biological sampling information along with instrument deployment information. Ultra-high resolution bathymetry grids of most vent sites are available for each of the ISS. Available legacy data compilations which predate Ridge 2000 include gridded gravity (EPR, Endeavour), magnetics (Lau, EPR), and seismic layer thickness (EPR), earthquake catalogs for early OBS experiments at Endeavour and EPR, and a wide range of seafloor imagery and bathymetry data. R2K data holdings currently total 12,000 data files, corresponding to a volume of 220 GB stored locally. This data volume does not include data that reside externally at distributed repositories, which the Data Portal links to (e.g. Alvin and Jason photography data which are hosted at WHOI, processed seismic sections at UTIG, underway geophysical data at SIO or NGDC).

5.4 R2K Proposal Process

R2K does not control the content, approach, or scientific complement of proposals submitted to the program. Additionally, it does not decide which proposals submitted to the Program do/don't get funded. Merit is determined within the broader NSF core programs (MG&G, BioOCE). Researchers considering applying for R2K funds are encouraged to take advantage of the Science Plan, Implementation Plans, and Workshop Reports as they develop their proposal. Program priorities, as set by the StCom, are announced in emails (distributed to our full list of members) and are placed on the R2K website. These priorities are provided to the NSF/R2K proposal review panel.

The NSF/R2K review panel is a recently-established mechanism where a dedicated multi-disciplinary panel advises NSF on (only) R2K proposals, following the usual OCE mail reviewer comment period. Until 2007, R2K proposals were rated by a subset of StCom (3-4 un-conflicted members) for program relevance (only, not for scientific merit) and then regular OCE panels (and mail reviewers) advised NSF on the science. A significant increase in MGG panel workloads and the desire to give the typically multi-disciplinary R2K proposals an informed panel discussion led to the change in procedure in 2007. At the same time, the program changed from accepting proposals twice a year to having a single submittal deadline, now set for January 15 each year.

5.5 Field Coordination

Designated Site coordinators for each ISS maintain up-to-date inventories on which experiments are being conducted where, what navigation protocols are required for maintaining a fully-registered map of all observations, and how ship uses might be optimized for a suite of scheduled programs.

The Multidisciplinary Instrumentation in Support of Oceanography (MISO) facility at WHOI (http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=13576) receives major support from R2K for provision of transponders, opportune towed camera use, and some other instrumentation.

Considerable effort has been required at both EPR and Endeavour ISS, due to the fairly large number and variety of seagoing experiments at the sites during the program thus far. Site Coordinators have worked with PIs to assess experimental needs and how they mesh with other PI plans in the same local area, including potential ship scheduling concerns. On occasion, coordinators need to be available on short notice to respond to incipient axial events. For example, volcanic or tectonic activity at/near the site may result in a rapid response effort to examine the effects of this activity at the ISS. In such cases, the Site Coordinator, uses their knowledge of the ongoing research at the ISS to assist the rapid response team in getting the most out of sampling/mapping time that can be supported during a response cruise.

Planning coordination and immediate data sharing between several different multi-disciplinary research parties during the first series of Lau cruises clearly illustrated what R2K can accomplish (rapid basic characterization and vent field localization) that would not be possible without a coordinated program. With focus site selection and the next series of seagoing proposals now funded, the expectation is that this ISS will require notable logistical coordination as well, and a Site Coordinator is already in place for this.

5.6 Postdoctoral Fellowship

The R2K postdoctoral program offers a unique scientific experience and helps to train the next generation of interdisciplinary ridge scientists. The fellowship requires the postdoctoral fellows to not only work at a host institution different from the institution where their doctoral work was done, but to also broaden their research interests by either applying their expertise in ridge science to problems in related disciplines that are distinct from those of their Ph.D. research, or to begin working for the first time on ridge science, thereby bringing their conceptual and technical expertise from another field to a priority Ridge 2000 objective. The intent of this program is to broaden the expertise of the postdoc and to expand the breadth of and inter-connections within Ridge science. The program typically awards one to two fellowships each year for a two-year period with the chance to renew for a third year.

5.7 Interactions with other programs

R2K scientists regularly are involved in other established programs that have overlapping goals. This allows R2K to expand the reach of Program and provides interaction with a broader US and international community. The cross-program interaction has taken many forms including jointly sponsoring meetings, working with other funding sources and programs to enhance research at R2K ISS, integrating R2K education and outreach into larger international groups, information exchange, and participation in international groups that are relevant to ridge science.

The U. S. is an InterRidge member nation, and 2 members of the R2K community act as representatives on the InterRidge StCom. InterRidge is an international program whose mission is to promote all aspects of mid-ocean ridge research (their study, use and protection) that can only be achieved through international cooperation. Through the connection and compatible goals of the 2 programs, R2K and InterRidge have sponsored a number of successful, international, multidisciplinary meetings.

In the same vein, R2K has also sponsored successful workshops and worked together to advance ridge research with the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, OOI, CheEss, and NOAA Vents Program.

As mentioned earlier, several groups have contributed to research success at the Endeavour ISS and rapid reponse cruises in general: the Keck Foundation, NOAA's Ocean Exploration, Canadian colleagues and the ROPOS submersible team, NSERC Canada, and NEPTUNE Canada. R2K has representatives on the Marine Protected Area Advisory Team that is led by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the lead agency managing the Marine Protected Area that encompasses the Juan de Fuca hydrothermal vents sites.

R2K education and outreach has benefited by networking with the GLOBE program, an international online education program. R2K is currently developing and testing GLOBE learning activities and system tools that bring R2K science into the GLOBE education system, available worldwide.