Atlantic Data Base for Exchange Processes at the Deep Sea Floor
The Atlantic Data Base for Exchange Processes at the Deep Sea Floor (ADEPD) was a marine research project funded by the EU from 1998 to 2000 as part of MAST III (Marine Science and Technology Programme). The project was coordinated by Prof. Dr. Karin Lochte at the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research, Warnemünde with contributions of ten European partners and one institute from the US. The aim of the ADEPD project was to build up a joint data base for deep sea biological and geochemical data from a variety of sources and to conduct a preliminary geographical analysis of these data. Emphasis was on the North Atlantic, since from this area most data are available and it is the most perturbed deep sea region due to human activities. 1775 published and unpublished data sets were collected in two years. This was the first project which has compiled a data base from existing deep sea data, long-term archived and accessible to the scientific community. Evaluation of the data collection showed that data are clustered in some well investigated areas of the Atlantic, but large regions are devoid of data like the Mid Atlantic Ridge, parts of the South Atlantic and