Impacts of Climate and Land Use Change on Land-Ocean-Atmosphere Fluxes and Biogeochemical Cycling of Carbon and Nutrients in the Northern Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ecosystem

Steven Lohrenz, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, slohrenz@umassd.edu (Presenter)
Wei-Jun Cai, University of Georgia, wcai@uga.edu
Hanqin Tian, Auburn University, tianhan@auburn.edu
Ruoying He, North Carolina State University, rhe@ncsu.edu
Charles Hopkinson, University of Georgia, chopkins@uga.edu
Howden Stephan, University of Southern Mississippi, stephan.howden@usm.edu

Changing climate and land use practices have the potential to dramatically alter coupled hydrologic-biogeochemical processes and associated movement of water, carbon and nutrients through various terrestrial reservoirs into rivers, estuaries, and coastal ocean waters. Consequences of climate– and land use–related changes will be particularly evident in large river basins and their associated coastal outflow regions. The large spatial extent of such systems necessitates a combination of satellite observations and model-based approaches coupled with targeted ground-based site studies to adequately characterize relationships among climate forcing (e.g., wind, precipitation, temperature, solar radiation, humidity, extreme weather), land use practice/land cover change, and transport of materials through watersheds and, ultimately, to coastal regions. Here, we describe a NASA Interdisciplinary Science program that will employ an integrated suite of models in conjunction with remotely sensed as well as targeted in situ observations with the objectives of describing processes controlling fluxes on land, their coupling to riverine systems, and the delivery of materials to estuaries and the coastal ocean. Our approach involves the coupling of terrestrial hydrological-ecosystem models with hydrological-biogeochemical models of coastal and estuarine systems used in conjunction with satellite and in situ observations to examine water quality, transport, and ecosystem function resulting from climate and land use change. Output from the Dynamic Land-Ecosystem Model is compared to observed time-series of data to allow for an examination of various climate and land use/land cover change scenarios on the delivery of materials from the watershed to the coastal margin. A three dimensional coupled physical-biological model is then used to examine ecosystem responses to terrestrial inputs. This research will provide information that will be integral to determining an overall carbon balance in North America. In addition, an expected outcome of this project will be a state-of-the-science coupled land-ocean, physical-biogeochemical prediction tool to assess land ecological processes and the coastal ocean responses in the face of climate change. Such information is needed to better understand linkages between land use changes and subsequent coastal processes including water quality and hypoxia in the northern Gulf of Mexico.

Presentation Type:  Poster

Session:  Coupled Processes at Land-Atmosphere-Ocean Interfaces   (Mon 4:00 PM)

Associated Project(s): 

• Related Activity

Poster Location ID: 52