Establishing the Atlantic-Arctic Distributed Biological Observatory (A-DBO)

NEWS


Thank you for showing interest and getting involved in shaping a strong A-DBO and pan-Arctic DBO framework!


🚢 Happy cruise season! Please have a look at our A-DBO cruise package, which is our current way of keeping track of observations within our sector and the basis for discussions at our annual meeting. More info under 'A-DBO planning and reporting tools', or within the package itself.


📢 Registration is now open: the A-DBO 2025 meeting will take place 10-11 December in Tromsø, Norway! We build our days around your presentations and interests, so please share such with us as soon as possible! More info under 'Upcoming events'.


🚩 For the Ocean Sciences Meeting 2026 (Glasgow, UK), please consider submitting abstracts to the  session Responses of the pan-Arctic Coupled Physical-Chemical-Biological System to Ongoing Environmental Changes, initiatied by the DBO and SAS communities. The session invites presentations that bring together complementary apporaches and perspectives including studies promoting appropriate planning for future multi-national programs and improved coordination of observations. Deadline for abstract submission is 20 August 2025! For more info, follow the official OSM2026 website.


  

BACKGROUND

During 2022-2025, Arctic PASSION provides the means for increased coordination capabilities to establish the Atlantic-Arctic Distributed Biological Observatory (A-DBO) network and the common practices for sampling, analysis and data sharing. The establishment process is open to scientists and institutions with interest to collaborate in this region, as well as to end-users who will benefit from results from the A-DBO. This webpage serves as our main hub of information during the pilot implementation phase. From here you will be able to find contact info, access common documents, and get the latest information about our events. The opportunities for getting involved are listed in 'Upcoming Events' below.

The A-DBO is envisioned as a comprehensive marine observing network for climate and environment in the Atlantic sector of the Arctic Ocean - one of the key gateway areas of the Arctic, currently experiencing rapid environmental, climate and ecosystem changes. Together with the pioneering observatory in the Pacific sector of the Arctic Ocean (DBO), the Davis Strait/Baffin Bay DBO and the Siberian DBO, the Atlantic DBO aims to serve as important contribution to the pan-arctic collaborative observatory network:


The locations of all four Distributed Biological Observatories overlaid on a bathymetric map of the Arctic Ocean.

The dots indicate key sites/standard stations while the bounding boxes outline hot spots/corridors being the focal areas of each DBO.



The fundamental motivation for the DBO sampling concept is to work across disciplines in dedicated geographical areas toward better integrated and available observations. The DBOs are shaped to:


•  Cover key ocean phenomena and processes under rapid change

•  Bring together all disciplines needed to understand the marine ecosystem functioning

•  Increase the data coverage within the focal areas
•  Utilize common, harmonized procedures for data sampling and sharing

•  Facilitate both dedicated (long-term) and opportunistic sampling

•  Encourage technological development for improved multidisciplinary coupling 

•  Be sustainable and overarch shorter observational efforts


The implementation work is carried through based on the DBO annual cycle with seasonal activities:



The annual cycle of the A-DBO activities with the main networking events being the open community meetings in autumn,

and at the Arctic Science Summit Week in spring.





A-DBO PLANNING AND REPORTING TOOLS

In our A-DBO Cruise Package you will find our current information on the 2024 cruise plans for the region, the positions for the A-DBO key sampling sites and a template of the metadata file to be used for reporting back your 2024 observations. Despite these pronounced key sites, please note that the framework for collaborations extend geographically beyond them, and is open to all actors within our region who identify an added value to or from our observational network.

The metadata sheet is established as our common living document where information on data availability is shared rather swiftly among us after each field season. We welcome any parameters describing biological, chemical, or physical sea-ice, water-column or seabed properties (these can be selected from a given list, or added manually).

Striving for improved comparability of data, and methodological agreement between various research groups, the A-DBO will work to formalize its best practices for sampling and analysis of our observations. For now, we warmly recommend the extensive collection of protocols by the Nansen Legacy project (https://doi.org/10.7557/nlrs.6684), being particular relevant for the geographical region of the A-DBO.

The metadata reports are currently sent to us, or brought to the A-DBO fall meetings. Please get in touch with us for further instructions.




UPCOMING EVENTS
A-DBO 2025 Autumn meeting

10-11 December 2025 | Tromsø, Norway

The autumn meetings are an opportunity to present summaries from your latest marine observations and share observation-related plans onward to explore possible synergies. We welcome presentations of biological, chemical, physical marine observations within the Atlantic-Arctic sector with primary focus on activities in 2022-2025. We also welcome input on modelling aspects since we are eager to improve the obs-model interactions within our region. Please register your participation and contributions through this form!



PAST ACTIVITIES


ASSW 2025 - 3rd Community meeting for the pan-Arctic network of DBOs

23 March 2025 | Boulder, Colorado, USA (and online)

The four DBO:s organized a joint, full-day DBO community meeting at ASSW2025, for presentations of the 2024 sampling activities and the plans for 2025/26, as well as for discussions about common aims and initiatives ahead. For further info see the meeting description and agenda, while we are compiling our meeting summary.


A-DBO 2024 Autumn meeting

10-12 December 2024 | Bremen, Germany (and online)

We were inspired of a long list of talks setting the 2024 perspectives for our Arctic sector, see the agenda. We also dedicated time to discuss what A-DBO is and is not, and how it should evolve onward: In what aspects do we wish, and are able, to harmonize our practices to strengthen our scientific outcomes? Both the scientific and organizational aspects conveyed through this meeting will be brought to the pan-Arctic scope, and our community meeting at ASSW2025.


ASSW 2024 - 2nd Community meeting for the pan-Arctic network of DBOs

21 March 2024 | 10:30 - 18:00 (GMT) | Edinburgh, Scotland, UK (and online)

The four current DBO:s organized a joint DBO community meeting at ASSW2024, for presentations of the 2023 sampling activities and the plans for 2024, as well as for discussions about common aims and initiatives ahead. The agenda can be found here, and the meeting summary will appear here soon too!



A-DBO 2023 Autumn meeting
28-30 November 2023, at the Institute of Oceanology, Polish Academy of Sciences (IOPAN) in Sopot, Poland

The main objective for this annual meeting was to give our members the opportunity to share experiences and outcomes of their 2023 activities and to summarize the observed status for the A-DBO sector. We also looked at the sampling plans for 2024 and discussed how to collectively strengthen our work onward – in terms of results, sampling plans, and common routines.

As a tangible output from the meeting, we work on an overview of the 2023 conditions in the Fram Strait. This scope was agreed upon since several  the harsh ice conditions north of Svalbard in early summer brought several cruises to this region, leading to a monthly coverage of some parameters between May and September. The overview was first presented at the all-DBO community meeting at ASSW2024 in Edinburgh, UK.

For more information on the Autumn meeting, see the agenda and meeting summary.


ASSW2023 Joint DBO Sessions

17 – 24 February 2023, in Vienna, Austria


The Pacific, Davis Strait and Atlantic DBOs jointly organized two sessions at the Arctic Science Summit Week 2023, in both the community and science parts of the conference:


A-DBO 2022 Autumn Meeting

31 October – 1 November 2022 in Bergen, Norway



The first A-DBO dedicated autumn meeting was held with focus on defining the fundamental spatio-temporal characteristics of the A-DBO and the associated core parameters to sample. We also took the opportunity to share news about our recent sampling activities and about our planned cruise activities. For more information, see the agenda and meeting minutes.


ASSW2022 Session on Establishing the Distributed Biological Observatory system in the Atlantic Sector of the Arctic Ocean 

27 March 2022 in Tromsø, Norway


This workshop was held to invigorate the process to implement a comprehensive marine observing system for climate and environment in the Atlantic sector of the Arctic Ocean. Inspired by the Pacific DBO system and based on existing long term observational programmes on the Atlantic side, discussions were initiated about priorities for sampling locations, variables, and methods as well as means of collaboration. A steering group was established to support the work of the executive team. For a summary of the workshop, please see the meeting minutes.



CONTACTS


Executive team:
Arild Sundfjord (NPI), Marit Reigstad and Anna Nikolopoulos (UiT)

Steering group:
Agnieszka Beszczyńska-Möller (IOPAN), Michael Karcher (AWI), Monika Kedra (IOPAN), Angelika Renner (IMR), Mikael Sejr (AU), Thomas Soltwedel (AWI), and Laura de Steur (NPI).

Email:
AtlanticDBO[at]npolar.no