Project Funding: 2014 - 2017

NRA: 2013 NASA: Carbon Cycle Science   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
Mangroves worldwide sequester atmospheric CO2 at a rate higher than other ecosystems based on net primary production estimates. However, over 50% of the CO2 fixed by mangroves cannot be accounted for. This 'missing sink' is ca. 0.1 Pg C/y, and therefore represents a significant part of the global carbon budget. It is hypothesized that this 'missing sink' is due to the transformation of organic to dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC). Subsequently, this mangrove derived DIC either gets exported to the coastal ocean or goes into the atmosphere as CO2 via gas exchange. However, there is currently not sufficient data to examine this hypothesis. We aim to quantify the seasonal variability in fluxes of inorganic carbon to the coastal ocean and across the air-water interface in order to determine the fate of this CO2 sequestered by mangroves in Shark River, Florida, which is located entirely without Everglades National Park and situated in the largest contiguous mangrove forest in North America. To accomplish our goals, we will: 1) conduct Lagrangian tracer release experiments in different seasons to determine the transformation in the water column and gas transfer velocities; 2) measure spatial distributions of carbonate parameters in the mangrove ecosystem; 3) make time series measurements of carbonate parameters at a choke point between the mangrove estuary and the coastal ocean; 4) estimate photoproduction rates of DIC from field samples and ocean color remote sensing. This proposal is relevant to the solicitation as it addresses 'Carbon Dynamics along Terrestrial-Aquatic Interfaces,' and focuses on the 'transformation and transport of carbon at the terrestrial-aquatic-atmospheric interfaces.'

Publications:

Rosentreter, J. A., Maher, D. T., Ho, D. T., Call, M., Barr, J. G., Eyre, B. D. 2016. Spatial and temporal variability of CO 2 and CH 4 gas transfer velocities and quantification of the CH 4 microbubble flux in mangrove dominated estuaries. Limnology and Oceanography. 62(2), 561-578. DOI: 10.1002/lno.10444

Ho, D. T., Coffineau, N., Hickman, B., Chow, N., Koffman, T., Schlosser, P. 2016. Influence of current velocity and wind speed on air-water gas exchange in a mangrove estuary. Geophysical Research Letters. 43(8), 3813-3821. DOI: 10.1002/2016GL068727

More details may be found in the following project profile(s):

• NASA Ocean Biology & Biogeochemistry (OBB) Project Profile
• North American Carbon Program (NACP) Project Profile