DFG-SPP1257 Project management and scientific networking

Jürgen Kusche

The recovery of mass transport and mass distribution in the Earth system within the German Priority Re-search Program SPP1257 requires an intensive interdisciplinary cooperation. A network of close coopera-tion between geodesy, oceanography, geophysics, glaciology, and hydrology has proven to be very useful and has to be extended in the second funding period. The research projects will again be organized in thematic domains or working groups. The team work especially in these working groups has to be intensified and linked to the overall task of this priority research programme. This cooperation will be based on workshops within the working groups and on general program science meetings to guarantee the scientific exchange and the work flow between the working groups and to achieve the interdisciplinary scientific objectives. A particular objective is to stimulate a network of young geoscientists participating in the use of the novel and excellent satellite data. The training of the young scientists will be supported e.g. by summer schools, doctoral and post-doctoral seminars and specific workshops performed by the junior scientists. The experiences during the first funding period showed that these various activities have to be extended. All these activities have to be again managed and supported by a specially assigned scientific manager in close cooperation with the general coordinator and the steering committee. The experiences during the first funding period underlined the need of such a dedicated person at post-doc level with an excellent view on all topics of the research programme. For internal and external exchange of informations, administrational topics, data sets, model results, documentation and publications, an internet platform http://www.massentransporte.de has been estab-lished and needs further enhancements and continuous maintenance. It is organized by the program coordination bureau based on a content management system which allows the autonomous user access and input according to rules for metadata structure. The internet platform will also serve as an interface to international scientific organisations. In the first two- years phase the website management has been performed by a scientific assistant under supervision of the steering committee. Also this important function within the priority research programme needs an increase of manpower and an adequate budget