50 Years of Ocean Discovery National Science Foundation 1950-2000 (2000) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
The Role of NSF in “Big” Ocean Science: 1950 to 1980
The Role of NSF in “Big” Ocean Science: 1950 to 1980
Pages 141-148
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 141... ...
Less than 5 percent of the funds were available to ocean sciences, but this was a big boost in the amount NSF had for oceanography. The second was the International Indian Ocean Expedition (IIOE)
|
From page 142... ...
The seasonal reversal of monsoon winds made it an ideal natural laboratory for observing the effects of wind stress on oceanic currents. On the basis of input from 40 scientists, national and international, invited by SCOR, representing different disciplines in oceanography, a prospectus for exploration of the Indian Ocean was prepared and finalized in August 1960 by a group of three eminent scientists, namely: Roger Revelle, United States; George Deacon, United Kingdom, and Anton Bruun, Denmark (Lambert, 1998a)
|
From page 143... ...
who, in discussing the IIOE geochemical efforts, states, "Data from different cruises could not be contoured together. Hence, the intended division of labor different areas of the ocean assigned to different groups led to a database of little use." The same statement does not hold for the extensive work in marine geology and geophysics, which was to prove very useful in the Geological and Geophysical Atlas of the Indian Ocean published in 1975 by the Academy of Sciences and Main Administration of Geodesy and Cartography of the USSR.
|
From page 144... ...
The National Science Foundation was given lead responsibility for the program. Goals and Objectives The goals of IDOE identified by the Marine Council in its January 1970 report were · preserve the ocean environment, · improve environmental forecasting, · expand seabed assessment activities, · develop ocean monitoring systems, · improve worldwide data exchange, and · increase opportunities for international sharing of responsibilities and costs for ocean exploration.
|
From page 145... ...
Proposals that might have been suitable for gaining support within the agencies were not favorably received by the academic reviewers. The final obstacle to agency participation in IDOE lay in the fact that even when the agency mission coincided with a particular IDOE project, there remained insurmountable problems resulting from differences in management style, funding procedures, and long-range research objectives.
|
From page 146... ...
The academic scientific leaders wishing to establish an IDOE project were called on to organize a planning workshop and to invite all research scientists who were knowledgeable about the subject and who might ultimately become important research members of the final project. If the workshop was successful, the leader or leaders of the project organized and submitted to IDOE a complex proposal describing the administration of the project, the scientific approach, and the role of each individual investigator in the project including a proposal from each investigator.
|
From page 147... ...
these were mail reviews, and the mail reviews for each project were then carefully considered by a panel of specialists that made its own recommendations. One of the major difficulties in reviewing IDOE projects was that traditionally NSF reviewers were accus tomed to reviewing only individual projects and the reviews focused on the question of scientific excellence and receiving ratings accordingly.
|
From page 148... ...
The 1979 NAS report concluded that, "the IDOE was a watershed in the history of Ocean Research. By providing the structure and resources for large scale, long term coordinated projects, the program gave a powerful impetus to the transformation of marine science from a descriptive effort to one increasingly driven by experimental and theoretical concerns." The report recommended that a program of cooperative ocean research should follow and evolve from IDOE and that it should be sponsored by NSF as a major component of its overall efforts in fundamental ocean research.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.