Perspectives and Integration in SOLAS Science

Why a chapter on Perspectives and Integration in SOLAS Science in this book? SOLAS science by its nature deals with interactions that occur: across a wide spectrum of time and space scales, involve gases and particles, between the ocean and the atmosphere, across many disciplines including chemistry, biology, optics, physics, mathematics, computing, socio-economics and consequently interactions between many different scientists and across scientific generations. This chapter provides a guide through the remarkable diversity of cross-cutting approaches and tools in the gigantic puzzle of the SOLAS realm. Here we overview the existing prime components of atmospheric and oceanic observing systems, with the acquisition of ocean–atmosphere observables either from in situ or from satellites, the rich hierarchy of models to test our knowledge of Earth System functioning, and the tremendous efforts accomplished over the last decade within the COST Action 735 and SOLAS Integration project frameworks to understand, as best we can, the current physical and biogeochemical state of the atmosphere and ocean commons. A few SOLAS integrative studies illustrate the full meaning of interactions, paving the way for even tighter connections between thematic fields. Ultimately, SOLAS research will also develop with an enhanced consideration of societal demand while preserving fundamental research coherency.

Ocean acidification with (de)eutrophication will alter future phytoplankton growth and succession.

Human activity causes ocean acidification (OA) though the dissolution of anthropogenically generated CO2 into seawater, and eutrophication through the addition of inorganic nutrients. Eutrophication increases the phytoplankton biomass that can be supported during a bloom, and the resultant uptake of dissolved inorganic carbon during photosynthesis increases water-column pH (bloom-induced basification). This increased pH can adversely affect plankton growth. With OA, basification commences at a lower pH. Using experimental analyses of the growth of three contrasting phytoplankton under different pH scenarios, coupled with mathematical models describing growth and death as functions of pH and nutrient status, we show how different conditions of pH modify the scope for competitive interactions between phytoplankton species. We then use the models previously configured against experimental data to explore how the commencement of bloom-induced basification at lower pH with OA, and operating against a background of changing patterns in nutrient loads, may modify phytoplankton growth and competition. We conclude that OA and changed nutrient supply into shelf seas with eutrophication or de-eutrophication (the latter owing to pollution control) has clear scope to alter phytoplankton succession, thus affecting future trophic dynamics and impacting both biogeochemical cycling and fisheries.

The ocean sampling day consortium.

Ocean Sampling Day was initiated by the EU-funded Micro B3 (Marine Microbial Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Biotechnology) project to obtain a snapshot of the marine microbial biodiversity and function of the world's oceans. It is a simultaneous global mega-sequencing campaign aiming to generate the largest standardized microbial data set in a single day. This will be achievable only through the coordinated efforts of an Ocean Sampling Day Consortium, supportive partnerships and networks between sites. This commentary outlines the establishment, function and aims of the Consortium and describes our vision for a sustainable study of marine microbial communities and their embedded functional traits.

Society, theatre and Social Work: beauty will save us

Three different worlds, sometimes concentric and often intersecting —society, theatre and the art of performance— and social work. Diverse worlds that live, reflect and self-reflect and interact, and can also afford an opportunity for meeting, misunderstanding and confrontation, and above all offer the possibility of profound change.This article considers the experience of a theatre company that has spent more than three years moving at the limits of these three universes. To these three worlds can be added an infinite number of words that fill them with meaning and significance: territory, meeting, diversity and search. An artistic experience that has chosen to focus on creating scenarios for debate and to examine the difficulties, the human contradictions and the constant and inexhaustible confrontation with human experience. At the heart of this theatrical activity is all of this, seeking the balance between narration, meeting, investigation and the artistic dimension. This meeting between society, theatre and social work also contains the search for sustainability of this cultural business, in an Italy that has been destroyed by a crisis that is not merely economic, but also of values and, above all, of role models. The guiding theme, though not always made explicit, is always present and essential: the search for beauty.

Art, adolescence and Social Work: Anja, the invisible manager

This article has been written with the intention of being able to analyse the contributions of art —theatre, in this case— to the practice of social work. For this purpose, we have chosen to read the social reality in which we intervene through the lens of social constructionism. This helps us to rescue the social and subjective side of art, and, moreover, to recover the depathologization of the subject in professional intervention. Thus, using a practical case taken from work with adolescents in the German FSJ programme, hand-in-hand with a young girl called Anja we trace the developmental and sociological aspects of adolescence in order to later address certain common points of art and psychosocial work. Art will hence be redefined as a transitional object allowing questions to be addressed relating to (self-) perception, attachment, communication and changes in conduct as the ultimate goal of professional action. Lastly, we note the limitations and risks of art-based intervention, in order to conclude with a final synopsis.