Performance with Respect to the Strategic Implementation Plan

4. Performance with Respect to the Strategic Implementation Plan

5. Plans for the Next Reporting Period

C-DEBI is continuing with its vision for long-term data management and knowledge transfer activities for the next reporting period, consistent with the current practices and those outlined in the renewal proposal and in response to feedback from previous NSF Site Review committee members and NSF personnel.

V. EXTERNAL PARTNERSHIPS

1. Overall External Partnerships Goals and Objectives

C-DEBI supports cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional partnerships that facilitate, augment, and expand the education, training, and research opportunities of Center participants.

2. Activities Conducted as Part of Partnerships

In Phase 2 of C-DEBI, we continue our strong, long-standing relationships with several high-profile external partnerships, both in research and education efforts. Of particular note on the research side are partnerships with the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP), University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS), National Deep Submergence Facility (NDSF), Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), the Sloan-Foundation funded Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO), US Department of Energy (DOE), International Continental Drilling Program (ICDP), Schmidt Ocean Institute (SOI), NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI), Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), and ExxonMobil. On the education side, we again partnered with the Agouron Institute to train graduate students in geobiology, and we continue to leverage our partnerships with the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies and USC SeaGrant programs on our undergraduate and high school experiences. We again offered our CC-RISE program at UCSC and MBL, and we used NSF-REU support (including a supplement) to train community college students in microbial culturing and other C-DEBI research.

Since its inception, C-DEBI science has been integrally connected to IODP's focus on exploring and documenting the deep biosphere. During Phase 1, C-DEBI scientists led several expeditions (Expeditions 327, 329, 336) and were integral science party members of many others (Expeditions 323, 330, 331, 337, 339, 347, and 353). Research continues from those expeditions in Phase 2 and the current reporting year; many papers from these expeditions were included in a recent special issue of Frontiers in Microbiology. Bracketing the start and end of the current reporting period, C-DEBI scientists led IODP Expeditions 357 (Atlantis Massif; Senior Scientist Orcutt) and 366 (Mariana Convergent Margin; Co-PI Wheat), both of which have deep biosphere science as a lead component. Moreover, C-DEBI scientists participated in several other expeditions throughout the year: 360 (SW Indian Ridge Lower Crust/Moho), 364 (Chicxulub Impact Crater), 365 (NanTroSEIZE Shallow Megasplay Long-term Borehole Monitoring System) and 370 (T-Limit of the Deep Biosphere off Muroto). IODP has also benefitted C-DEBI efforts through salary, research, workshop, and travel support for scientists, educators, engineers, and students, both within the US and internationally.

C-DEBI relies heavily on the UNOLS fleet of research vessels for expeditions, as well as the NDSF fleet of remotely operated vehicles (e.g., Jason), autonomous underwater vehicles (e.g., Sentry), and the human occupied vehicle Alvin, particularly for CORK servicing activities and coring expeditions. Co-PI’s Amend and Huber, among other C-DEBI members, attended the DESCEND-2 (2nd DEep Submergence science for the Next Decade) workshop last January, focused on defining the critical scientific goals of the submergence community and the technological directions that will be required to address these goals.

C-DEBI collaborates closely with the Geomicrobiology Group (led by Fumio Inagaki) at the JAMSTEC-Kochi Institute for Core Sample Research. In the past year, several C-DEBI scientists from IODP Expedition 357 (Atlantis Massif) utilized state-of-the-art facilities at JAMSTEC for processing samples, and C-DEBI scientists from IODP Expedition 370 (T-limit of the deep biosphere) were based at these facilities throughout the expedition. Members of C-DEBI and JAMSTEC have also partnered on other international expeditions and proposals for new expeditions.

The Sloan Foundation-funded DCO is organized into four research communities, including one on ‘deep life’, which is dedicated to assessing the nature and extent of the deep microbial and viral biosphere. This community, co-chaired by Mitch Sogin and Kai-Uwe Hinrichs, funds scientific networking opportunities (e.g., workshops), instrumentation, infrastructure, and focused research initiatives (e.g., the Census of Deep Life (CoDL) and a project on rock-hosted communities). C-DEBI member Rick Colwell is the lead proponent of the CoDL and a member of the DCO Deep Life Steering Committee. C-DEBI Co-PI D’Hondt is also a member of the DCO Deep Life Steering Committee. Several C-DEBI samples have been included in the CoDL sequencing efforts and others are in the queue. C-DEBI supported scientist Karen Lloyd is a member of the DCO Executive Committee. Senior Scientist Orcutt and C-DEBI member Karyn Rogers serve on the Task Force 2020 to chart the future of the DCO program.

A joint DCO/C-DEBI workshop on Origins and Movements of Subsurface Microorganisms was held May 9-10 at USC organized by Tom Kieft and Doug LaRowe. It addressed fundamental questions about how deeply-dwelling microbial species become adapted to diverse subsurface conditions and become geographically distributed in what appear to be hydrogeologically isolated settings. Experts in groundwater dating, hydrogeological flow and transport modeling, genomics, and evolutionary microbiology were brought together to present plenary lectures and participate in breakout sessions to discuss the current state of knowledge as well as opportunities for new field and laboratory studies.
ICDP

The ICDP is supporting several deep life projects, including drilling of the Oman ophiolite and the Death Valley rift zone. C-DEBI is partnering with ICDP by supporting complementary aspects of these projects, with a particular focus on their microbial communities. Both of these ICDP projects also link to the NAI (see below); Duane Moser, Co-I on the ‘Life Underground’ team is playing a central role in the Death Valley drilling plans, and Alexis Templeton, PI on the ‘Rock-Powered Life’ team is directly involved in the Oman drilling activities.

UCSC-based C-DEBI researchers were invited in 2016 to join scientists from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, and Battelle's Pacific Northwest Laboratory on a proposal to the DOE's Carbon Storage Assurance Facility Enterprise (CarbonSAFE): Integrated CCS Pre-Feasibility. This proposal is for analysis of parts of the Juan de Fuca plate that could potentially be used for large-scale carbon storage; this proposal was recently recommended for funding. Work to take place in 2017-18 will include analysis of single- and cross-hole pressure, temperature, and tracer response to perturbation, as a means to assess hydrogeologic properties of this environment that could impact CO₂ injection. This work builds directly from C-DEBI studies associated with IODP Expedition 327, modeling, and related post-drilling expeditions. A formal decision about this DOE project has not yet been made, but is anticipated in the next 4-5 weeks. Assuming a positive decision, more details will be provided in the 2017 Annual Report.

SOI is a private foundation that serves as an oceanographic operator for the seagoing community by providing ship and vehicle time via community solicited, peer-reviewed proposals. A number of ExCom members and C-DEBI investigators have participated in cruises aboard the SOI research vessel Falkor. For example, Associate Director Huber headed to sea with SOI in late November 2016 to explore newly discovered hydrothermal vents along the Mariana BackArc. Many C-DEBI members have submitted proposals to SOI for the next round of expeditionary proposal selections and are awaiting decisions on their outcome.

‘Life Underground’ is one of the NAI CAN-6 teams, with 5 year funding through 2017. This cross-disciplinary team, led by PI Amend, is using field, laboratory, and modeling approaches to detect and characterize microbial life in the subsurface—predominantly, but not exclusively, on the continents. C-DEBI and NAI are sharing key personnel, jointly developing down-hole biomass detection capabilities using deep UV microscopy, modeling microbial metabolism potential in marine sediments globally, and coordinating several education and outreach efforts. An NAI Postdoctoral Fellowship was recently awarded to Elizabeth Trembath-Reichert from Victoria Orphan’s lab to work between Huber and Amend on microbial activity in North Pond crustal fluids. As another example, former C-DEBI postdoctoral scholar Annie Rowe (working with Ken Nealson) is now working with Amend and Moh El-Naggar (Physics at USC), funded by the NAI.

C-DEBI (through the UCSC Hydrogeology group) is collaborating with researchers in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Group at LANL to develop complex simulations of seafloor hydrothermal circulation. Co-PI Fisher and graduate student, Esther Adelstein, visited with LANL colleagues in Summer 2016, to collaborate on grid generation and modeling, and postdoctoral researcher, Tess Weathers, is developing reactive transport models using the same numerical tools. Fisher and colleagues have also collaborated with development of geostatistical tools that can be applied to generation of complex permeability fields, and irregular boundaries, for improved representation of the upper ocean crust. Collaborative work with LANL and other colleagues is expected to continue into 2017.

C-DEBI (through Co-PI D’Hondt) collaborated with ExxonMobil Upstream to build on our studies of microbial diversity in deep subseafloor sediment and its relationship to microbial diversity in the surface world. A recent product of this collaboration is U.S. Patent No. 62/343,463 (Methods for Isolating Nucleic Acids from Samples) by Aaron Regberg, Zarath M Summers, A Lucie N'Guessan, John Kirkpatrick and Steven D'Hondt (Provisional Application filed 31-May-2016).

The interdisciplinary nature of C-DEBI research lends itself magnificently to a diverse array of external education partnerships as well. One of our primary education goals is to train the next generation of deep subseafloor biosphere researchers, and to do so, we partner with one of the top training courses for graduate students, the Agouron Institute International GeoBiology summer course. In 2016 (and in previous years), this course was co-directed by C-DEBI member Dr. John Spear, Colorado School of Mines, and featured several C-DEBI members as guest lecturers. We also partnered with the Metcalf Institute for Marine & Environmental Reporting for our annual professional development workshop targeting graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Just as C-DEBI and the Agouron Institute course share key personnel (administrative and instructional), so do C-DEBI and the USC Wrigley Institute. This facilitates our training of undergraduates through programs such as the Global Environmental Microbiology course (based heavily on the successful GeoBiology program) and a growing ROV education program at the Institute’s marine lab on Catalina Island. The facility is also the site of our high school program, run by the USC SeaGrant program, and held at the Wrigley Institute. Our outreach partners have grown to include the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, the College of Exploration, and community colleges across the country that enable us to train teachers at the K-16 levels.