Global Seamounts Project

The Global Seamounts Project (GSP) is an international scientific initiative that will explore and model one of the ocean’s largest , most productive, and least understood biomes: oceanic seamounts. 

The project proposes to mount a major series of deep-sea expeditions over the next six years to conduct intensive, standardized surveys of representative seamount ecosystems in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Ocean basins. Teams of ecosystem modelers will concurrently populate leading ecosystem models augmented with emerging modeling frameworks, with GSP field campaign datasets.

This project will accelerate the science of seamounts from what has historically been a descriptive approach toward an understanding of complex ecosystem function and behavioral responses to environmental stressors. One that can explore feedbacks, synergies, resilience, and potential tipping points from multiple factors driven by climate change, resource extraction, pollution, and other impacts.

The development of next-generation biophysical models for oceanic ecosystems will ultimately be crucial to understanding and influencing the course of potential impacts from human-driven stressors and climate change. The Global Seamounts Project will move us in that direction. 

Click on the Project Overview button below for more information about this project.

“No report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would fail to mention global climate models. Yet the international bodies that are charged with addressing global challenges in conservation…cannot refer to analogous models of the world’s ecosystems. Why? Because ecologists have not yet built them.”

Purves, Drew, et al. "Time to model all life on Earth." Nature 493.7432 (2013): 295-297.

“Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning research needs to embrace the challenge of extracting order from complexity… This research is now maturing; it has advanced sufficiently to move beyond simply invoking the precautionary principle as it has done throughout its history.”

Naeem, Shahid, J. Emmett Duffy, and Erika Zavaleta. "The functions of biological diversity in an age of extinction." Science 336.6087 (2012): 1401-1406.

Project Highlights

Project Team & Advisors

GSP Steering Committee

The current GSP Steering Committee has been instrumental in scoping and developing this project and its scientific vision over the past few years. As the project moves to the Working Groups, workshops, and research planning phase, the Committee is actively inviting broader participation at the Steering Committee level and in Science Advisory roles. We are seeking diverse participation from international scientists, especially from developing regions, early career scientists, graduate students, and wider disciplinary participation including from the biophysical/complex system modeling communities. 

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GSP Science Advisory Council

Note: GSP Steering Committee members (above) and Science Advisors (below) indicated with an asterick (*) are also members of the GSP Ecosystem Modeling Workshop Steering Committee. The committee held two planning meetings in 2020 for the first GSP Ecosystem Modeling Workshop, planned for early 2021.   

Tim O'Hara, PhD, Deputy Head, Marine Sciences, Museum of Victoria, Victoria, Australia

Nadine Le Bris, PhD, Full Professor, Marine Chemistry, Ecology and Biogeochemistry, Sorbonne Universite, Observatoire Oceanologique de Banyuls, France

* Richard Bailey, PhD, Associate Professor of Geochronology, University of Oxford, UK; Co- Director, Oxford Martin School Programme on Sustainable Oceans; Leader, CoHESys Lab research group

* Derek Tittensor, PhD, Professor, Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

* Telmo Morato, PhD, Researcher, University of the Azores, Porta Delgata, Portugal 

* Sheila Heymans, Executive Director, European Marine Board, Oostende, Belgium

* Jason Link, Senior Scientist for Ecosystem Management, NOAA Fisheries, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA

Sonya Legg, PhD, Research Oceanographer, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), NOAA-OAR; Associate Director of Cooperative Institute for Climate Science,  Princeton University

Brian D. Fath, PhD, Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Towson University, Maryland, USA; Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Ecological Modelling & Systems Ecology

Elena Rovenskaya, PhD, Director, Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program, International Institute of Advanced Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria

Patrick Halpin, PhD, Associate Professor, Marine Geospatial Ecology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA

Nicolas Cassar, PhD, Associate Professor of Biogeochemistry, Earth and Ocean Sciences Division, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA

David Vousden, PhD, Professor of Ocean Governance, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa; Chair, Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection (GESAMP)

Javier Sellanes, PhD, Associate Researcher, Catholic University of the North, Antofagsta, Chile 

* Frank Muller-Karger, PhD, Professor, Biological Oceanography and Remote Sensing, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, Florida, USA

Ben Fitzpatrick, PhD, Director, Oceanwise Australia, Perth, Australia

* Ward Appeltans, Project Manager, OBIS, GOOS Biology & Ecosystems, IOC/UNESCO, Oostende, Belgium

Gregory Stone, PhD, Ocean Renaissance, LLC, Los Angeles, California, USA

* Andreas M. Thurnherr, PhD, Lamont Research Professor, Ocean and Climate Physics, Lamont- Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, New York, USA

Douglas Levin, PhD, Deputy Director & Chief Innovation Officer, Center for Environment & Society, Washington College, Chestertown, Maryland, USA

Jesse van der Grient, PhD, Post-doctoral Researcher, CoHESyS lab OUCE, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, UK