Fall 2019 – GoMRI Synthesis & Legacy
– JANUARY 14, 2020
 Participants in the Vulnerability and Resilience |
 Participants in the Operational Oil Spill Modeling (Core Area 7) workshop held in Washington, D.C., from October 15-17. Photo Credit: Abby Ackerman/ Consortium for Ocean Leadership. |
 GoMRI researchers and participants of the 2019 AGU Fall Meeting from December 9-13 in San Francisco, California. Photo Credit: Sherryl Gilbert/C-IMAGE. |
(From Fall 2019 Newsletter) Contributing Author: Callan Yanoff
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative’s (GoMRI) Synthesis and Legacy efforts have shifted from hosting scientific workshops to focusing on the subsequent products, legacy pieces, and outreach activities. These elements have become vehicles to broadly distribute the results of the Synthesis workshops and highlight the importance of investing in collaborative science.
As the sunsetting of GoMRI and its 10 years of investment in research nears, the GoMRI community closed out the decade productively, with 2018 and 2019 chock full of Synthesis and Legacy workshops at various locations around the country. October of 2019 proved to be a busy month for the Synthesis team, with two consecutive workshops bringing researchers together to increase understanding across the following GoMRI Synthesis Core Areas:
Vulnerability and Resilience of Species and Ecosystems to Large-Scale Contamination Events: Lessons from Deepwater Horizon (Core Area 3 Workshop II) took place October 9-11 in Washington, D.C. This workshop aimed to prepare a high-level quantitative synthesis of longitudinal (time series) information indexing the population and ecosystem trajectories of marine species and ecosystems impacted by the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) accident. The workshop also evaluated life history and associated scale effects that are implicated in the decline and potential recovery of ecosystem components, including life span, fractions of populations impacted by the spill, population connectivity among potential source populations, and sensitivity of various life stages to oil contaminants. Correlations among time series were assessed and compared with ecotype-specific food webs to evaluate species interactions potentially affected by the spill. Vulnerability and susceptibility of various impacted resources were a major focus. More information on this workshop, including the goals, a participant list, and the agenda is available here.
Operational Oil Spill Modeling (Core Area 7) was held October 15-17 in Washington, D.C. The main objective of this workshop was to examine operational aspects of oil spill modeling, review the state of knowledge that predated GoMRI, as well as the new knowledge or technical solutions developed in the past 10 years. All required modeling components of an “integrated oil spill system” were addressed, such as ocean circulation models, wave forecast models, numerical weathering and oil fate predictions, and transport modeling. The workshop focused on short timescale mechanisms that are relevant for operational oil spill modeling and how these mechanisms are, can be, or cannot be implemented in operational oil spill prediction systems. More information on this workshop, including the goals, a participant list, and the agenda is available here.
To begin a string of active GoMRI participation in conferences, GoMRI had a strong Synthesis presence at the 2019 AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco, California, from December 9-13, with many Core Area leaders presenting posters. In conjunction with the Fall Meeting, GoMRI and C-IMAGE collaborated to host a Story-Collider event on December 12 (read more on page 2), detailing personal stories about natural disasters and the way we cope. GoMRI will have a presence at many upcoming conferences across the country to share results of the Synthesis efforts through sessions, posters, and events, including:
National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) Annual Conference
January 6-9, 2020, Washington, D.C.
A general synthesis session was submitted by the GoMRI Research Board, with an overarching title of 10 Years Since DWH – Lessons Learned from the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative.
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting
February 13-16, 2020, Seattle, Washington
Advances in Understanding Oil Spills and Mitigating Impact and Consequences, a GoMRI Research Board- motivated session, was submitted and accepted. This session will aim to build interest in GoMRI synthesis results.
Ocean Sciences Meeting 2020
February 16-21, 2020, San Diego, California
Core Area 6 leadership will be hosting a session entitled Microbial Genomics to Improve Predictive Understanding of Disturbance in the Global Ocean System.
International Oil Spill Conference (IOSC) 2020
May 11-14, 2020, New Orleans, Louisiana
GoMRI leadership has collaborated with IOSC to create a GoMRI Special Session to integrate synthesized GoMRI science into IOSC 2020.
Please visit the Synthesis and Legacy website for more information on upcoming conferences. Please continuously visit the Synthesis and Legacy Products page, as there are many products currently in development.
