Assessing Impacts of Climate and Land Use Change on Terrestiral-Ocean Fluxes of Carbon and Nutrients and their Cycling in Coastal Ecosystems

Abstract:

Climate change, increasing population, and associated changes in land use have placed tremendous pressures on coastal ecosystems. We describe an integrated research effort involving observations, modeling and prediction to explore how climate and weather-related forcing in conjunction with changing human activity can alter the transfer of water, carbon and nutrients through various terrestrial reservoirs into rivers, estuaries, and coastal ocean waters, ultimately impacting the biogeochemistry and trophic dynamics of the coastal ocean. We refer to recent NSF- and NASA-funded research applying an integrated suite of models in conjunction with remotely sensed as well as targeted in situ observations to understand processes controlling fluxes on land and their coupling to riverine, estuarine and ocean ecosystems. Past and present conditions across land-ocean continua are examined, as well as coupled model projections of future scenarios for climate, land-use and other human activity. Finally, we provide examples of approaches for determining an overall carbon balance in coastal margins and for describing and predicting how climate and land use changes impact coastal water quality, including coastal eutrophication, hypoxia and ocean acidification.