Assessing the Impact of Developing-World Land Use on Riverine Organic Carbon Delivery to the Ocean

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).River inputs play a significant role in the geochemistry of the global oceans. Rivers provide a significant source of nutrients, organic matter and suspended sediment to coastal shelves and the open ocean. The delivery of high nutrient loads to coastal areas can increase primary production, which will further increase the amount of organic carbon delivered to marine sediments. Understanding the amount, as well as the chemistry, of the terrestrial materials delivered from rivers to the ocean is essential to comprehend both the current and future patterns of carbon burial in ocean sediments. It is recognized that watersheds located in tropical and subtropical developing regions play an increasingly important role in river nutrient release, and to predict the human impact on coastal and global ocean processes, it is important to understand the impacts of the developing regions of the globe. Researchers from Rice University will study a suite of Venezuelan rivers to characterize the effects of developing-world land use practices on river nutrients, organic carbon, and total suspended solid inputs to the ocean. Correlating an impact and land use index with the chemistry of exported materials, will provide clarification on the relationship between land use and the mass and composition of the riverine material delivered to the ocean. The results from this research will also provide a better overall understanding of the global marine carbon cycle. This research is being done as a collaborative effort between United States and Venezuelan scientists and will provide support for two PhD students.