Carbon cycling within coastal continental margins is fundamentally important to the global carbon cycle. Coastal oceans contribute about 1/3 of the total marine productivity across the globe (or about…

This federal contract award is a grant to Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, a non-profit research organization in East Boothbay, Maine, to continue the Gulf of Maine North Atlantic Time Series (GNATS) project. GNATS is an 18-year observational study that measures the four key components of the coastal ocean carbon cycle (particulate organic carbon, particulate inorganic carbon, dissolved organic carbon, and dissolved inorganic carbon) across the Gulf of Maine using ferries, research vessels, and autonomous underwater gliders. The $1,328,402 grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will allow Bigelow Laboratory to expand this critical long-term monitoring program, which has already documented fundamental shifts in the Gulf of Maine ecosystem during anomalously wet years. This award is not associated with a set-aside program.

Carbon cycling within coastal continental margins is fundamentally important to the global carbon cycle. Coastal oceans contribute about 1/3 of the total marine productivity across the globe (or about 16 PG (1PG =1E15G)). They receive about 1PG from terrestrial discharge via rivers. They contribute about half of the total global ocean new production (3.6PG). These are big numbers yet we still do not know whether coastal margins are net sources or sinks for carbon. There are four components of the carbon cycle particulate organic carbon (POC), particulate inorganic carbon (PIC), dissolved organic carbon (DOC), and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC). The first three carbon fractions (POC, PIC, and DOC) can be estimated using optical proxies while the fourth (DIC, associated with ocean acidification) is best measured chemically. There are few coastal time series that assess all of these components. This proposal is a successor proposal for the gulf of maine north atlantic time series (gnats), an 18-year transect time series across the gulf of maine (GOM) using ferries, small research vessels, and gliders to measure all four parts of the carbon cycle. During several anomalously wet years, gnats documented some fundamental shifts in the GOM such as significant drops in primary production (associated with POC and PIC production) and the appearance of unexpected highly scattering particles