North American Carbon Program (NACP) and Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry (OCB) Interim Coastal Carbon Synthesis

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The contribution of coastal margins to regional and global carbon budgets isnot well understood, largely due to limited information about the magnitude, spatial distribution,and interannual variability of carbon sources and sinks in coastal waters. The Ocean Carbon &Biogeochemistry (OCB) Program has been collaborating with the North American CarbonProgram (NACP) over the past two years to develop a Coastal Interim Synthesis Activity as partof the NACP Interim Synthesis activities, the goals of which are to bring together relevantobservations, data, and modeling efforts in an effort to identify and quantify key sources, sinks,stocks, fluxes, and associated processes in the North American carbon budget. The objective ofthe Coastal Interim Synthesis Activity is to synthesize individual, small-scale observational andmodeling studies from different regions of the North American continental margin acrossbroader spatial and temporal scales to improve quantitative assessments of the North Americancoastal carbon budget. Because the coastal oceans have important and complex linkages withterrestrial, atmospheric, and open ocean biogeochemical cycles, it is important to provide for the participation of researchers focused on both organic and inorganic carbon, as well as nitrogenand phosphorus cycle topics related to carbon balance and related issues such as hypoxiaimpacts on continental margins.With support through this award to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), OCB scientists from WHOI, the University of Alaska - Fairbanks, and the University of South Florida will convene two workshops to facilitate data gathering and synthesis efforts related to coastal carbon budgets in five regions?East Coast (including Gulf of Maine), West Coast (including Gulf of Alaska), Gulf of Mexico, Arctic (including marginal seas such as the Bering, Chukchi, Beaufort, and Baffin-Labrador), and Great Lakes. Additional funding to support these efforts will be provided by NASA and NOAA.Broader Impacts: Coastal margins represent a significant unknown in the North Americancarbon budget. By leveraging the shared community expertise of two leading U.S. carbon cyclescience programs (NACP and OCB), this project will improve coastal carbon sink/sourceestimates and facilitate the community interaction needed to ensure a seamless transitionbetween land and sea in our understanding of the most important processes driving the NorthAmerican carbon cycle. The proposed approach convenes scientists with specializedknowledge of regionally important physical and biogeochemical processes to develop robustregional coastal carbon budgets that more effectively account for some of the inherent spatialand temporal variability of coastal systems. Another key outcome of this project will be atremendously valuable historic dataset that will improve our understanding of the carbon cycleand inform public discussion and policy making on issues related to climate change, humanhealth, and fisheries, all of which are intimately linked to carbon cycling. Recovery of these dataand their incorporation into a publicly accessible data base will enhance the development ofpredictive models for coastal regions and also enable more comprehensive linkage of land,atmosphere, and ocean modeling of carbon dioxide and the carbon cycle. There are currently50 years of observations in most U.S. coastal regions, providing much-needed historicalcontext to monitor the health of coastal ocean ecosystems, which are becoming increasinglyvulnerable to threats of ocean acidification, eutrophication, and hypoxia.