Modular System for Shelves and Coasts

The overarching goal of the project Modular System for Shelves and Coasts (MOSSCO, www.mossco.de) was to bring together the distributed capacities in coastal ocean modelling in Germany and to build a common infrastructure for the national and international coastal research community.

MOSSCO built a framework for a modular data and model system, an infrastructure, which has been identified as research demand by the Forschungsagenda Nord- und Ostsee within the framework of the Research Agenda for Sustainable Development (FONA, www.fona.de). MOSSCO integrates physical, biological, chemical and geological modules in an exchangeable way. This modular infrastructure supports synoptic studies of coastal and shelf seas including their interfaces to adjacent Earth-system components, such as sediment, atmosphere, rivers and the open ocean. Benefits of this approach are most apparent for the description of cohesive sediments where strong interactions between the benthic and pelagic compartment and between hydrodynamic, biogeochemical (BGC), ecological and sedimentary processes are largely unresolved within state-of-the-art models.

该项目名为模块化货架与海岸系统（MOSSCO，www.mossco.de），其根本目标在于整合德国在海岸海洋模拟领域的分散能力，并构建一个服务于国家及国际海岸研究社区的通用基础设施。MOSSCO构建了一个模块化数据与模型系统框架，该框架作为可持续发展战略（FONA，www.fona.de）框架下“北海与波罗的海研究议程”（Forschungsagenda Nord- und Ostsee）的研究需求之一而被确立。MOSSCO通过可交换的方式集成了物理、生物、化学和地质模块。这一模块化基础设施支持对海岸及大陆架海域及其与邻近地球系统成分（如沉积物、大气、河流和开阔海域）的界面进行综合研究。在此方法中，描述凝聚性沉积物时所带来的益处尤为显著，因为在当前最先进的模型中，底栖与浮游层之间的强烈相互作用，以及水动力、生物地球化学（BGC）、生态和沉积过程之间的相互作用在很大程度上尚未得到解决。