Ocean Margins Program: Closure on the global carbon cycle. Program description
The Department of Energy`s Ocean Margins Program (OMP) is designed to quantitatively assess the importance of coastal ocean systems in the global carbon cycle. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, human energy-related activities have dramatically altered the global carbon cycle, and consequently, this cycle is not presently in a steady-state. To reduce major uncertainties in predicting future global environmental quality, it is imperative to understand the sources and sinks of atmospheric CO{sub 2}, the role of anthropogenic activities in disrupting the natural carbon cycle, and the effects of, and feedbacks between, these activities and the natural carbon cycle. Due to continuously increased loading of nutrients to the margins, which, globally, is related to the rate of human population growth and high population densities in coastal states, biological carbon fixation has been stimulated. Depending on the fate of the fixed carbon, this stimulation has the potential to mitigate the anthropogenically derived Co{sub 2}. Determining the factors that control the magnitude of carbon exchanges between the ocean margins and the atmosphere, and the subsequent fate of this carbon, is crucial to predicting the strength and capacity of the oceans to absorb excess anthropogenic atmospheric CO{sub 2}. The goals of the OMP are to: quantify the ecological and biogeochemical processes and mechanisms that define the cycling, flux, and storage of carbon and other biogenic elements at the land/ocean interface; identify how ocean-margin sources and sinks of carbon change in response to human activities; and determine whether continental shelves are quantitatively significant in removing atmospheric carbon dioxide and isolating it via burial in sediments or export to the interior of the open ocean.
- Research Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Research, Washington, DC (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 10181409
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/ER-0620P; ON: DE94018617; NC: NONE
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: Aug 1994
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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