Summer school participants in front of the ICBM building in Oldenburg (country of home institution in brackets)
Front row: Inés González Viana (Spain), Margaret Mars Brisbin (Japan), Priya Namrata (India), Lumi Haraguchi (Denmark), Irene Hu (USA), Lydia Luise Bach (United Kingdom), Lia Pinheiro Godinho (Portugal), Hadar Berman (Israel);
back row: Abolghasem Hedayatkhah (The Netherlands), Jürgen Köster (ICBM, co-ordinator), Katriina Juva (Finland), Benjamin Pontiller (Austria), Lydia Babcock-Adams (USA), Richard Patton(United Kingdom), Sirje Sildever (Estonia), Dominik Bahlburg (ICBM), Benjamin Stewart (New Zealand).

From July 4 to 18, 2015 the Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM, University of Oldenburg) will organise a summer school entitled “Water column processes from coast to ocean”. The summer school will be held at ICBM facilities in Wilhelmshaven and Oldenburg, Germany. The focus is on (micro)biology, chemistry, and physics of the water column of the southern North Sea coast.

Background

Despite their relatively small surface area, coasts and coastal oceans are of great global importance. They link land and oceans, contribute over-proportionally to net primary productivity, harbour highly diverse ecosystems, and are sites of intense carbon remineralisation and burial. The southern North Sea (Wadden Sea) is the largest continuous tidal system worldwide. It consists of barrier islands and intertidal flats, as well as large embayments and estuarine river mouths. Due to its outstanding international importance and its unique nature, the Wadden Sea is listed as UNESCO World Heritage since 2009.

Coastal water columns in the southern North Sea are characterised by high loads of suspended and dissolved matter. The aggregated particles show a close seasonal interplay of biological and physical processes. The water column chemistry is affected not only by afflux from rivers but also from subterranean ground water discharge. The released pore water is enriched in metabolic products (e.g. nutrients and methane) and trace elements that are exported to the open sea. Further, processes at the air-sea interface regulate the exchange of gases, heat, and particles and are of global importance.

The southern North Sea coast is an excellent setting for a summer school and belongs to the best studied tidal coasts worldwide. The Jade Bay, one of the large embayments formed in historical times by storm surges, has been subject of a baseline study from 2008-2011. The back barrier tidal area of the island of Spiekeroog has been studied in detail by the interdisciplinary DFG Research Group on “BioGeoChemisty of Tidal Flats” (2001-2010).

Based on these experiences the participants of the summer school will benefit from the multidisciplinary approach of the ICBM and its scientists. The scientific programme comprises excursions, sampling, lab work using up-to-date analytical instrumentation, and lectures concerning different topics of coastal research.

Participants will gain a better understanding of the biological, chemical, and physical processes underlying and sustaining an ecosystem. This is of fundamental importance to predict the development of a coastal ecosystem when affected by climate change or human activities (like land use, tourism, diking, and renaturation) and is the base for sustainable ecosystem management and protection.

Topics

The main topics of the summerschool are:

• Introduction to the coastal area of the southern North Sea and Wadden Sea research
• Excursions by research boats, car, and on foot (Jade Bay, Spiekeroog, tidal flats, ecology, landscape and settling history)
• Plankton ecology
• Microbiology and proteomics
• Nutrient, trace metal, and isotope geochemistry
• Sea surface microlayer
• Hydrodynamics and modeling