The Ridge 2000 Program, created with the input of more than 200 U.S. scientists and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), has elected Dr. Charles Fisher, professor of biology at Penn State, as chair of its 15-member steering committee. His three-year term coincides with the creation of the program office at Penn State, with support from the National Science Foundation, the Eberly College of Science and the Department of Biology.
Along with Fisher, the office includes three full-time employees: Debbie Hassler, program coordinator; Patty Nordstrom, program assistant; and Liz Goehring, education and outreach coordinator.
“As the action arm for the steering committee, the office works to foster collaboration and communication within its community of scientists,” Fisher said. “We strive to get everybody working together so that the most progress can be made and to communicate the excitement of our work to audiences that range from the NSF and legislators to secondary school students and the general public.”
The Ridge 2000 Program works to understand the geobiological, geochemical and geophysical causes and consequences of energy transfer within the globe-encircling mid-ocean ridge system. The mid-ocean ridge system marks the boundary along which Earth’s major tectonic plates form. As volcanic material from the planet’s mantle surges to the seafloor, it helps resurface the Earth and impacts the deep-ocean environment and its inhabitants.
For 12 years starting in 1988, a predecessor program, the Ridge InterDisciplinary Global Experiments (RIDGE) Program, promoted research, scientific communication and outreach related to all aspects of the mid-ocean ridge system. When that program ended, the new program, named Ridge 2000, built on the experience, knowledge and lessons learned through its predecessor to develop a more-focused program stressing integrated interdisciplinary collaboration and long-term experiments in a limited number of areas of the deep ocean.
With Fisher as chair of the steering committee and the program office located at Penn State, Ridge 2000 already has differentiated itself from its predecessor program. Fisher is the first biologist to chair the committee—all the others were geoscientists, and Penn State becomes the first land-locked institution to house the program office.
According to the Ridge 2000 science plan (available on the Web at http://www.ridge2000.bio.psu.edu/R2k_sci_plan_2003.pdf), as many as six different deep-ocean sites will be the focus of integrated efforts that involve eight or 10 research cruises and an investment of at least $9 million for research each year during the next decade.
The scientific goals of the program require the involvement of scientists from many different areas necessary for the study of the ocean crust and its actions, complex ecosystems and hydrothermal vents. Those areas include biology, chemistry, geology, physics and many subdisciplines. The Ridge 2000 Program will focus on the integration of research across a wide range of subdisciplines, emphasizing the interactions between the complex seafloor and subseafloor ecosystems and the geological processes that support them.
“With Ridge 2000, we plan an increased commitment to large-scale, interdisciplinary science,” Fisher said. “We will involve all kinds of scientists at one site at the same time and will address questions that bridge gaps between disciplines. Through the initial Ridge Program, a strong sense of community emerged among scientists, and we want to perpetuate that positive, proactive approach to collaboration with Ridge 2000.”
Community Education Workshops over the past two years have helped guide planning for the Ridge 2000 Program, which is supporting two main research themes: Time-critical Studies and Integrated Studies.
The goal of the Time-critical Studies element is to understand the nature, frequency, distribution and geobiological impacts of magmatic and tectonic events along the global mid-ocean ridge system. To this end, the theme focuses on the immediate biological, chemical and geological consequences of active processes on the seafloor. Such processes generally occur as transient events and include volcanic eruptions and intrusions of magma at the ridge axis and faulting related to seafloor spreading. Time-critical Studies are dedicated to facilitating rapid-response missions that can observe, record and sample critical transient phenomena in the ocean above the mid-ocean ridge and on the seafloor itself.
The Integrated Studies theme is a program of focused, whole-system research of global mid-ocean ridge processes, addressing the complex, interlinked array of processes that support life at and beneath the seafloor as a consequence of the flow of energy and material from Earth’s deep mantle, through the volcanic and hydrothermal systems of the oceanic crust, to the overlying ocean.
Integrated Studies will consist of multidisciplinary research that is focused on a small number of preselected “type” areas that are designed to characterize segments of the mid-ocean ridge system, with the objective of developing quantitative, whole-system models through coordinated and interdisciplinary experiments. Ridge 2000 scientists will need to understand the interactions and linkages among the volcanic, tectonic, geochemical and biological systems to achieve this goal. The Integrated Studies theme will initially focus on three sites chosen on the basis of a community vote and a review by a Ridge 2000 Integrated Site Selection Panel (http://www.ridge2000.bio.psu.edu/ISPANELRPT.htm).
In addition to the research themes, the Ridge 2000 program also is committed to education outreach. While individual Ridge scientists have developed educational offerings, such as a program which takes teachers to sea and numerous interactive Web sites that feature near-real-time cruise coverage, the Ridge 2000 community is beginning to work together to develop integrated ridge science education programs. Our goal is to develop a suite of offerings that will make it easy for educators to incorporate this exciting science into their classrooms, engaging students in the process of scientific discovery.
All biologists, chemists, earth scientists, engineers and physicists who are interested in mid-ocean ridge science are encouraged to participate in Ridge 2000. Scientists in related disciplines at Penn State already have provided abundant support for the effort.
“Ridge 2000 provides a wonderful opportunity and resource for Penn State,” Dr. Tanya Furman, associate professor and associate head of the Department of Geosciences, said. “We already have several faculty members in geosciences who work with ridge-related matters, and Professor Fisher has valuable experience and a strong reputation with the program.”
The program’s research could make an impact beyond the ocean, as well. For example, the lowest levels of the ridge ecosystem contain abundant microbial populations, including some of the most primitive life forms on our planet. Recognition of the subsurface ecosystem has prompted speculation that there are other parts of the solar system, especially the moons of Jupiter, that are capable of supporting similar life forms.
“Many of us already cross college and departmental boundaries with our work and having the Ridge 2000 office here might facilitate even more interaction among those of us on campus,” Dr. Kevin Furlong, professor of geosciences, said. “Along with efforts such as Penn State’s NASA-funded Astrobiology Institute, we have people who do oceanographic and ocean-related research in the Eberly College of Science, the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences and the Department of Meteorology. We do a large amount of ocean-related research for a land-locked institution, and this should make even more people aware of our efforts.”
For more information about the Ridge 2000 Program, visit the Web site at http://www.ridge2000.bio.psu.edu/. To join the Ridge 2000 mailing list, send an e-mail to ridge2000@psu.edu or call 814-865-RIDG (7434).
