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Phase II

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GLOBEC Canada seeks to examine how living marine resources are effected by variability of their physical environment. It is a collaborative program funded for four years jointly by NSERC (Research Partnerships) and DFO (Priority Allocations, A-Base). The collaborations involves fifty scientists from seven universities (Memorial, Dalhousie, Laval, UQAR, Queen's, UBC and UVictoria) and five government laboratories (NAFC, BIO, IML, IOS and PBS). Strong links exist with other national programs, e.g. in the US and Norway, and with GLOBEC International.

Marine ecosystems undergo large interannual to decadal fluctuations. These large swings affect almost every fishery, and are becoming apparent in time series of ocean climate and plankton indices. The time scale is such that human impacts in terms of economic and societal dislocation, can be very large. There is much evidence for an underlying causal connection through physical environmental forcing of variations in ocean productivity. Unfortunately, timely diagnosis and management response are hampered by insufficient knowledge of intermediate causal linkages.

The multidisciplinary integration of field and modelling studies in GLOBEC Canada will increase our causal-level understanding. The relevance of GLOBEC includes, but is not limited to, climate change trends associated with global warming. A major focus will be on interannual to interdecadal fluctuations and their effects on target populations through recruitment variability of individual species and changes in overall community structure. Simultaneous research programs are being conducted for the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Canada.

This site was last updated the 15th of November, 1999.
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