Building the capacity for forecasting marine biogeochemistry and ecosystems: recent advances and future developments

Building the capacity for monitoring and forecasting marine biogeochemistry and ecosystem dynamics is a scientific challenge of strategic importance in the context of rapid environmental change and growing public awareness of its potential impacts on marine ecosystems and resources. National Operational Oceanography centres have started to take up this challenge by integrating biogeochemistry in operational systems. Ongoing activities are illustrated in this paper by presenting examples of (pre-)operational biogeochemical systems active in Europe and North America for global to regional applications. First-order principles underlying biogeochemical modelling are briefly introduced along with the description of biogeochemical components implemented in these systems. Applications are illustrated with examples from the fields of hindcasting and monitoring ocean primary production, the assessment of the ocean carbon cycle and the management of living resources. Despite significant progress over the past 5 years in integrating biogeochemistry into (pre-)operational data-assimilation systems, a sustained research effort is still needed to assess these systems and their products with respect to their usefulness to the management of marine systems.