From: ppenhale@nsf.gov
Date: Sat, 14 Mar 98 12:58:30 EST
To: ray@icess.ucsb.edu, rmarinel@nsf.gov, ppenhale@nsf.gov
Subject: LTER Review

  Ray: Please forward the below message to the entire set of LTER 
  PIs. Thanks, Polly
  
  
Dear LTERs:

I've had the chance to talk to Ray and some of you about the upcoming LTER 
review to be held on April 30, 1998. This message is to present more detail 
about the meeting. The intent is to review progress and to discuss the future. 
There will be no requirement for any written material to be prepared for the 
meeting. I view this review process positively. The meeting will give the review
team an opportunity to assess at the last two years of work, particularly with 
regard to issues brought up through the review process of the renewal proposal. 
This process also will give you the opportunity to tell us about your future 
plans and needs, particularly with regard to long-lead time requests for 
support. In the current budget climate in OPP, both in terms of the PBM program 
grant funds and in terms of the Operations Science Support budget, there is 
considerable competition for diminishing resources. All of OPP is contributing 
to the priority of the South Pole Modenization project. The better planning we 
all do now, the more likely your future needs will be supportable.

In this vein, it is important that you present us with your requests in terms of
the research goals and priorities of your program. Whether it be beds at Palmer 
Station, cruise support, new equipment, collaborative activities with BAS or 
other groups, etc., your requests should be presented in terms of an overall 
long-term research plan. As the data is analyzed and synthesis/modeling 
activities occur, I expect that your priorities and needs will evolve. This may 
result in some areas being emphasized and other areas being reduced as well as 
new areas being addressed. With the amount of data already collected, I expect 
you will be able to anticipate much of this now.

Again, back to the OPP budget. We simply do not have the flexibility that we did
in the past. Even a month ago, we had to call ongoing PIs and tell them that we 
had to reduce their already planned field support for next field season. I doubt
if you were aware that some of the support provided to the LTER in the past, 
such as GPS and aerial photography, is supported directly out of PBM funds. The 
bottom line is that for the next few years, we all will be working hard to sort 
out priorities. The two LTERs have been one of the PBM program's top priorities.
That won't change, but I expect that all projects in PBM will feel the result of
overall OPP priorities.

As for the schedule, I'd like to begin with a morning of presentations and to 
follow with an afternoon of discussion. The morning will be open to other NSF 
staff and will give us the opportunity to let our NSF colleagues learn about the
PAL-LTER. I don't expect a big crowd, but key personnel in OPP, DEB and our 
public affairs office are likely to attend. You can set up the seminars as you 
see best from an intellectual point of view, but I suggest that Ray being with 
an overview of the program, the goals, etc. Then, I see a series of shorter 
presentations followed with questions or discussion, like talks for an ASLO 
meeting. This could be structured by PI, by research topic, by collaborative 
efforts, etc.;  it would be good if all of you are involved in the 
presentations.  The time frame for the morning would be from 8:30 am to about 
11:30 or noon.

The afternoon will be a closed discussion. I'll lead the discussion and the 
other participants will be Roberta Marinelli, Scott Collins and Janet Campbell 
(NASA headquarters). Janet's program provides some support to the LTER efforts, 
so she is an ideal person to join the review. Also, I expect that Dennis Peacock
will attend part of the meeting.  I'll ask Al Sutherland and/or Simon Stephenson
to join the discussion of future field plans.

I'd like this afternoon session to be an informal discussion focusing on the 
following issues, a number of which were noted in my request for an addendum to 
the renewal proposal:

1)  Date Management and Data Policy. This topic should focus on progress to date
in meeting the specified grant conditions found in your award letter, and should
include a brief summary of the current status of the data accessibility, 
metadata availability, QA/QC issues and the status of data submission to NODC. 
Additionally, the collaboration with NASA and making that data available through
the LTER website is a topic to cover.

2) Role of Physical Oceanography and Modeling in the LTER. The proposal review 
process identified this as an area of concern; similar concern was voiced by 
your Steering Committee. With the departure of the physical oceanographers from 
the PAL-LTER, this becomes a very timely, as well as crucial, topic. The clear 
advice to date has been to bring in a physical oceanographer with field 
experience who has modeling expertise. As I've discussed with some of you, this 
may very well involve a reapportionment of funds to allow this area to move 
forward in a manner relative to the importance of this topic. As I've discussed 
with Ray, I'm not so interested in seeing this resolved quickly as seeing a 
consensus on how you plan to reach your goals. The topic of conceptual modeling 
to link individual components to achieve the greater synthesis should also be 
addressed in the context of your program.

2) Long-range research plans and field program plans. This is where you can 
discuss your views on how the conceptual framework of your research can best be 
implemented. The principles of LTER research are that short- and long-term 
experiments are conducted in the context of hypothesis-driven long-term 
measurements. Implied is that the LTER is not static, but will continue to move 
forward as certain topics become more important and others less and when new 
approaches are implemented. I'd like to hear your views on where you are going, 
what is needed to achieve your goals, and what time frame is desirable for 
implementation. 

Additionally, in terms of issues raised during the proposal review, I'd like you
to address the integration of the flux component with the other research topics 
and the relationship between the bacterial and phytoplankton components. I'd 
like you to cover the issue of spatial scale and the relationship between the 
data collected through measurements and experiments conducted at Palmer Station 
and within the larger grid.

The above should give a general overview of the day. I expect the afternoon 
discussion to go from 1:00 pm until 4:00 or 5:00 pm.  I'm off to the GLOBEC Open
Science Meeting later today where there will be a planning session for Southern 
Ocean GLOBEC. I will be back will be back in the office on March 23. More 
concrete information on logistics will be sent to you at that time.

Regards, Polly