Overview of the Advanced Research Workshop on bloom-forming marine cyanobacteria

Abstract

Blooms of planktonic cyanobacteria occur in oligotrophic tropical and sub-tropical oceans and in the Baltic Sea. Intense N2 fixation during blooms may provide large inputs of new N to these waters. Recently, several independent lines of research have concluded that open ocean N2 fixation, one component of new N input, may have been severely underestimated, and this may have been due to the difficulty in quantifying blooms. Studies on the ecology and physiology of these bloom-forming cyanobacteria in the Baltic and tropical seas have proceeded with little previous scientific interchange between their respective researchers. The application of modern technologies, including moelcular biological techniques and remote sensing (among others) has accelerated the pace of effort in each realm. With support from NATO and the US NSF, an Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) was held in Bamberg, Germany, in May 1991, with the objective of discussing the comparative ecology and physiology of bloom-forming N2 fixing cyanobacteria in the sea. The meeting promoted unique scientific interactions and exchanges across disciplines (molecular to megascopic levels) and between systems (tropical and temperate cyanobacteria), helped identify common questions, and stimulated cross-fertilization of ideas and approaches. -from Authors