EAGER: A novel approach to measure greenhouse gas emissions from coastal marine ecosystems

University Of Virginia Main Campus, Charlottesville VA

Investigators

Abstract

The PI requests EAGER funding to develop a better and more accurate approach for determining greenhouse gas exchange between shallow-water marine systems and the atmosphere. If successful, this would transform our ability to accurately measure air-water exchange of greenhouse gasses in shallow-water marine ecosystems. The results of this EAGER project would increase our understanding of how aquatic ecosystems can help mitigate the impacts of human generated greenhouse gas emissions. More accurate and process-based knowledge on this topic is needed to allow better predictions of climate change impacts that would be expected and to outline local and global mitigation initiatives. The accelerating warming of Earth has spurred an intense and global focus on greenhouse gas exchange between the atmosphere and aquatic systems, including coastal waters. As direct measurements of air-water exchange of greenhouse gasses, here defined as CO2, CH4, and N2O, are complex and challenging to perform, most estimates today are based on published general empirical relationships from which exchange coefficients are estimated and multiplied with site-specific concentration differences over the air-water interface. This EAGER research proposes to combine upside-down aquatic eddy covariance (AEC) measurements of O2 fluxes over the air-water interface with an array of the best of these new greenhouse gas sensors and, from the prior, to extract greenhouse gas-specific exchange coefficients in order to calculate air-water greenhouse gas fluxes. If the new approach works, it would be transformative and have two major outcomes: it will vastly improve estimates of greenhouse gas air-water exchange where it is applied; and it will lead to new lines of research on the complex controls of this greenhouse gas exchange. Both outcomes are urgently needed to fill important knowledge gaps on greenhouse gas exchange in aquatic environments. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.