The investigators will construct a carbon budget for an upper slope region of the Middle Atlantic Bight. Previous studies in this region led to the controversial hypothesis that export of organic carbon from plant productivity from continental margins represents a major pathway for transfer of CO2 from the atmosphere to the deep ocean. The source term for the organic carbon budget will be provided by a large number of primary productivity and sediment trap flux measurements to be obtained during a DOE-funded study of Shelf-Edge Exchange Processes. This work will include independent approaches to evaluate the rate of organic carbon remineralization at the upper slope as well as the rate of organic carbon burial. Carbon fluxes determined in this study will help resolve the controversy regarding the importance to the global CO2 cycle of the transport of margin-derived organic carbon to the deep sea and will further provide a quantitative relationship between organic carbon fluxes and benthic ecosystem energy requirements.
