The ocean s biological carbon pump is one of the key mechanisms controlling transfer of carbon (c) out of the atmosphere into the deep ocean. Due to considerable research efforts, key mechanisms,…

This federal contract award, valued at $648,826.99, was granted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to the University of Maine System (UMS) to conduct research on the ocean's biological carbon pump. The research aims to improve the quantification of carbon export from the upper ocean by deploying specialized sediment traps and sensors to link upper ocean plankton with vertical transport mechanisms and the resulting magnitude and efficiency of carbon export. This work directly addresses key science questions from NASA's EXPORTS North Atlantic field campaign. As the state's land-grant and sea-grant institution, UMS has extensive experience in environmental research and is well-positioned to deliver this project. The contract does not have a set-aside designation, reflecting UMS's broad capabilities and competitiveness in open federal contracting.

The ocean s biological carbon pump is one of the key mechanisms controlling transfer of carbon (c) out of the atmosphere into the deep ocean. Due to considerable research efforts, key mechanisms, organisms, and interactions involved in the biological pump have been identified, but the magnitude and dynamics of this globally important process are still poorly quantified and constrained (boyd and trull 2007 henson ET AL. 2011 siegel ET AL. 2014). Our inability to accurately quantify the biological pump is due, in part, to missing links between complex ecological processes and the resulting magnitude and efficiency of c export through the upper 500 m of the ocean where most of the c flux attenuation occurs (stukel ET AL. 2012, siegel ET AL. 2014). The future capabilities in ocean color remote sensing will allow finer discrimination of the surface phytoplankton community, enabling models to accurately incorporate relationships between phytoplankton functional types and major biological carbon export pathways. For advanced satellites to improve quantification of the biological pump, predictable links between organisms, export mechanisms, and the magnitude and efficiency of c export must be resolved and constrained. We propose to deploy neutrally-buoyant sediment traps (nbsts) and a surface tethered sediment trap array (STT) centered around a continuously profiling BIO-optical sensor platform in the upper 500 m of the ocean during the exports north atlantic field campaign. These observations will explicitly link upper ocean plankton with vertical transport mechanisms and the resulting magnitude and efficiency of c export, and therefore will directly address exports science questions 1 and 2. This work is guided by an overarching hypothesis that the magnitude and efficiency of c export in the upper ocean is determined both by the identity of sinking organisms and the mechanism of their transport. We break this broad hypothesis into three testable sub-hypotheses, which build upon one another and are illustrated by the FIG. 1 schematic.