Controls on the Lateral Flux of Dissolved Organic Carbon from the Coterminous U.S.
David
Ellison
Butman, Yale University, david.butman@yale.edu
(Presenting)
Peter
Raymond, Yale University, peter.raymond@yale.edu
Scott
Goetz, Woods Hole Research Center, sgoetz@whrc.org
The riverine transport of carbon is an important component of the net terrestrial and oceanic carbon cycles. To date, however, the inclusion of riverine fluxes in local, regional and global carbon budgets is only performed at rough scales. The majority of analyses suggest that DOC flux is a small component of regional and global carbon cycling across monthly and annual timescales. Spatial and temporal scales are going to drive the variability in DOC yield from the terrestrial landscape. A preliminary analysis for the Eastern Coast of the US suggests that discharge many not be correlated with the movement of organic carbon from the landscape, and that land cover and temperature are driving coastal DOC fluxes. In addition, the use of a Regression Tree model, a non-parametric approach to predicting DOC flux, over the use of a traditional Multiple Linear Regression increases the percent of variance explained across the input data by over 100%. This research will be completed for the lower 48 states.
NASA Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Active Awards Represented by this Poster: