  
Bering Ecosystem Study (BEST) Implementation
Plan
Time-line
After the publication
of the ambitious BEST Science Plan, there was a need to formulate a
series of research priorities for moving the research ahead in the most
efficient and productive fashion, and for establishing effective collaborations
between the natural science and a social science components of BEST.
The BEST Planning
Office (PO), working together with the BEST Science Steering Committee
(SSC) and with representatives of government and non-governmental research
and funding organizations, assembled the BEST Implementation Plan. The
objectives of this plan were to: (i) develop a set of priority research
modules to focus the first phase of the BEST field program (2007 - 2010),
(ii) assemble a set of recommendations for the design of an effective
field program to address these priorities, (iii) achieve a comprehensive
perspective of the changing Bering Sea by integrating the field program
with parallel modeling and retrospective analyses components, and (iv)
develop an end-to-end research program capable of investigating the
forcing mechanisms, multiple trophic levels, and ecological / economic
/ social consequences of ecosystem change, from the large scale atmospheric
forcing to the people who depend on the resources of the Bering Sea.
Working through
conference calls, the BEST PO and BEST SSC developed the Implementation
Plan during spring 2005, and presented a draft version to the scientific
community in May 2005, at a BEST Open Implementation Workshop held in
conjunction with held in conjunction with the ESSAS Symposium "Climate
Variability and Sub-Arctic Marine Ecosystems", sponsored by GLOBEC
(GLOBal ocean ECosystems dynamics) and the North Pacific Marine Science
Organization (PICES). This day-long workshop was attended by over 130
participants, who were able to provide input through a variety of means,
including written comments / emails, small break-out groups, large plenary
sessions, and invited / contributed oral presentations. The BEST PO
and BEST SSC reviewed these recommendations and comments at a follow-up
conference call (June 2, 2005) and incorporated the relevant recommendations
into the final version of the Implementation Plan during a two-day meeting
in Seattle (June 13 - 15, 2005). The BEST PO completed the Implementation
Plan revisions during the summer, and delivered the final version to
NSF in September 2005 for use in the BEST Announcement of Opportunity
(AO).
BEST
Implementation Plan Executive Summary
The goal of the
Bering Ecosystem Study (BEST) Program is to develop a fundamental understanding
of how climate change will affect the marine ecosystems of the eastern
Bering Sea, the continued use of its resources, and the economic, social
and cultural sustainability of the people who depend on it.
In recent years
it has become increasingly apparent that the ecosystems of the eastern
Bering Sea, spanning from the Aleutians to St. Lawrence Island, and
from the inner shelf to the slope, are changing concurrently with fluctuations
in the climate patterns of the region. These ecosystem changes have
important ecological implications for the productivity and the food
webs of the Bering Sea, ranging from planktonic organisms to the upper
trophic level fish and marine mammals targeted by subsistence and commercial
harvests. These ecological changes are also likely to impact the social,
economic, and cultural systems of the people dependent on Bering Sea
resources. Thus, an understanding of coupled physical - biological -
social dynamics is essential for the sustainable management of eastern
Bering Sea resources in the face of future ecological, social, economic,
and cultural change.
This Implementation
Plan outlines the first phase of a ten-year research program focused
on the marine ecosystems of the eastern Bering Sea and the people dependent
on its resources. To improve understanding of the variables and processes
shaping all aspects of the Bering Sea, from physical forcing (atmosphere
and ocean) to food web responses including fish, seabirds, marine mammals,
and humans, fundamental research in the physical, natural, and social
sciences, appropriate for funding by the National Science Foundation
(NSF), will be linked to studies funded by other agencies with interests
in this important region. The BEST Science Plan
outlines a broad range of questions important for understanding how
climate variability could influence the ecosystems of the eastern Bering
Sea and their ability to sustain the goods and services required by
people. Social scientists developed a parallel Science Plan, Sustaining
the Bering Sea (www.arcus.org/Bering/hbest/index.html), which outlines
a community-based research program focused on the need of the residents
of Bering Sea communities to understand how climate variability will
affect their future. These two initially separate programs have now
been integrated into a single program that will study the ecosystem
as a whole, including the social implications of climate change and
the roles of people in the system.
Because the drafters
of the natural and social science Science Plans foresaw the need for
a more ambitious science program than the available resources could
support, implementation of the BEST program will follow a two-phase
approach. Initially (2007 - 2011), research will focus on a comprehensive
investigation of the impacts of seasonal sea ice on the eastern Bering
Sea (Section V). This emphasis is motivated by the critical role sea
ice dynamics play in structuring the physical marine environment and
the food webs of the Bering Sea, by evidence of recent declines in seasonal
ice cover, and by the importance of sea ice in subsistence activities.
Understanding the role of changing sea-ice conditions (extent, concentration,
thickness, and seasonality) on the chemical, physical, and biological
characteristics of the ecosystem and human resource use activities is
the most urgent research priority of the BEST Program. The study of
changing sea-ice dynamics and its impacts on ecosystem processes and
sustainable harvests encompasses many of the individual processes important
to the BEST Program. As additional resources become available, it is
expected BEST will develop a second phase in which other components
of the two Science Plans will be developed into research programs (modules
2-5, Appendix 1).
The temporal / spatial
scales of the field research will be influenced by the duration of the
program (5 years) and by logistical limitations (e.g., ship-time availability).
Given the expected duration of the field program, BEST activities will
initially focus on inter-annual variability during spring (March - June),
and will target the eastern shelf of the Bering Sea, from the Aleutians
north to St. Lawrence Island. Social science research will complement
the natural science but is not limited to the March-June time-frame
or to the exact geographical parameters just noted.
The BEST program
will bring together physical, biological and fisheries oceanographers,
ecologists, climatologists, archeologists, anthropologists, economists,
and other social scientists in a highly integrated and interdisciplinary
program. The work will draw on regional historical datasets derived
from modern oceanographic programs over the last several decades, longer-term
instrumental and written records, and knowledge of ecological change
recorded by the multigenerational observations of local populations.
BEST will develop the next generation of conceptual and numerical models
needed to link ecological and physical change and provide better strategies
to anticipate and ameliorate climate-induced impacts on subsistence
and commercial resource users.
The study of ecosystem
changes in the eastern Bering Sea will involve the investigation of
a full suite of variables and processes that are linked ecologically
but divided by the research mandates of different agencies and organizations.
The BEST program must therefore be capable of integrating a variety
of complementary research efforts to develop a unified understanding.
Researchers in BEST will need to develop collaborations with scientists
in a number of agencies with different mandates. Collaborations among
scientists funded through NSF, NOAA, NASA, NPRB, BASIS, AOOS, USGS,
and USFWS will be required to accomplish an end-to-end understanding
of the eastern Bering Sea ecosystem and its users. In the face of the
rapid ecosystem changes underway, this understanding is essential to
sustain the rich marine resources of the eastern Bering Sea, and the
people and cultures dependent on their harvest.
 Download
a pdf of the BEST Implementation Plan from the ARCUS web-site.
 Email ARCUS to request a hard
copy of the BEST Science Plan.
Note: If you are using Acrobat Reader version
5.x / 6.x on Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows, you may wish to
download the document by right clicking the link and choosing the "Save
Target As" option. If you have difficulty with the PDF download, please
try these solutions, email webmaster@arcus.org, or call (907)
474-1600.
Funding
2006 BEST competition - Arctic Research Opportunities
Solicitatio: NSF 05-618 - COMPLETED (Link
to full solicitation)
- NSF-Funded
projects
- Other
related projects
2007 BEST competition - Bering
Ecosystem Study (BEST) Solicitation: NSF 07-533 - ONGOING (Link
to full solicitation)
Date Posted: 12/08/06
Full Proposal Deadline(s) (due by 5 p.m. proposer's local time):
March 15, 2007
Last modified: 2006-12-08
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