Launching an effort to network Subantarctic carbon research

Welcome to Subantarctic.net, home of the SAZ Project, an effort to network Subantarctic carbon research.

Subantarctic waters lie between the Subtropical Front and the Polar Front and comprise half of the area of the open Southern Ocean. This is the region where mode and intermediate waters form, and control the uptake of heat, rain, carbon dioxide, and oxygen from the atmosphere on decadal timescales. These waters are impacted by terrestrial (such as dust flux) and tropical oceanic (eddy and boundary current transports) influences to a greater extent than polar waters. They also host important commercial, recreational, and artisanal fisheries.

The northern boundary of the Subantarctic is in close proximity to countries such as Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Chile and Argentina. Each has active research programmes in the Subantarctic, and many also conduct other research (for example phytoplankton lab culture studies, dust sampling, remote sensing) that are pertinent to Subantarctic research concerns.

This website aims to bring together information on historic, recent and ongoing research activities in Subantarctic waters by nations bordering these waters. We hope that the existence of this site will encourage interactions among these and other researchers interested in the Subantarctic - to provide additional materials, exchange information, and promote synthesis of a circumpolar perspective on the importance of the Subantarctic to global climate and marine ecology.