Program Update – April 2011
The National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP) will attend and host an exhibit booth at the 2nd International Marine Conservation Congress in Victoria, British Columbia from May 14-18. Please stop by our booth and pick up a copy of the report on Attaining an Operational Marine Biodiversity Observation Network.
The following NOPP-hosted federal groups met in April at the Consortium for Ocean Leadership:
- Interagency Working Group on Facilities and Infrastructure (IWG-FI)
- Interagency Working Group on Ocean Partnerships (IWG-OP)
- IWG-OP Biodiversity Ad Hoc Group
- IWG-OP Federal Renewable Ocean Energy Working Group
The IWG-FI received an update from the Task Force on Unmanned Systems and was briefed on the National Research Council report on An Ocean Infrastructure Strategy for U.S. Ocean Research in 2030. The IWG-OP reviewed the NOPP funded proposals on marine mammal detection and monitoring and discussed the topic of earth scale exploration. The IWG-OP Federal Renewable Ocean Energy Working Group discussed a new Categorical Exclusion that the Department of Energy (DOE) is preparing to implement within their organizations to improve the way they fund projects. A Design Wind Conditions workshop, to be held in June, was also discussed, as well as a new knowledge management system being housed at DOE. The Biodiversity Ad Hoc Group discussed a future interagency workshop on the creation of a US Biodiversity Monitoring Network and how the report on Attaining an Operational Marine Biodiversity Observation Network can inform the workshop.
The Ocean Research Advisory Panel (ORAP) met this week on April 25-26 at the Consortium for Ocean Leadership in Washington, D.C. The ORAP finalized input to the development of the nine Strategic Action Plans of the National Ocean Policy and briefings were held on data management, archiving and sharing. The next ORAP meeting will be August 23-24, 2011 at Ohio State University’s Stone Laboratory in Put-in-Bay, Ohio. The Ocean Acidification Task Force, under the ORAP, recently released their updated report on Recommendations for ORAP to Convey to the Interagency Working Group on Ocean Acidification.
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