Dear North American East Coast Carbon Cycle Scientist:

The contribution of coastal margins to regional and global carbon budgets is not well understood, largely due to limited information about the magnitude, spatial distribution, and temporal variability of carbon sources and sinks in coastal waters. Building on recommendations put forth during the 2005 North American Continental Margins (NACM) Synthesis and Planning Workshop and progress made since then, the Ocean Carbon & Biogeochemistry (OCB) Program has been collaborating with the North American Carbon Program (NACP) to develop a Coastal Synthesis Activity to stimulate the synthesis of observational and modeling results on carbon cycle fluxes and processes along the North American continental margins.  This activity has been divided geographically into five regions: East Coast, West Coast, Gulf of Mexico, Arctic, and Great Lakes. In December 2010, OCB and NACP convened a coastal synthesis community workshop sponsored by NASA.  During the workshop, participants compiled spreadsheets of regional data sets, process studies, and modeling resources that could be helpful in quantifying regional carbon fluxes.

To follow up on the progress made at this larger community workshop, a series of smaller, more focused regional team meetings will be held over the next several months.  The primary outcome of these meetings will be the development of preliminary regional carbon budgets based on existing data and modeling resources. 
We are organizing the regional meeting for the East Coast, which will take place at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science of the College of William and Mary on January 19-20, 2012.  If you are interested in helping to develop a carbon budget for the study region, we would welcome you as a regional team member and invite you to attend this meeting.  Limited travel funds are available.  In advance of the meeting, each team member will be assigned a single process, parameter, or flux (e.g., riverine input, photosynthesis, respiration, cross-shelf flux, sediment-water flux, air-sea flux, etc.), most likely according to their expertise and/or contacts. That member will then be expected to help quantify that piece of the regional budget in preparation for the meeting by reaching out to colleagues working in that particular area and delving into the literature, including existing products and resources (with the regional spreadsheet from the December workshop as a starting point). Even if you cannot participate in the January meeting, we still welcome and encourage your input and assistance in quantifying key fluxes along the east coast of North America. Fluxes can be provided for the entire region, or for one of the three sub-areas (Gulf of Maine, mid-Atlantic Bight, South Atlantic Bight). In addition to contributing to the actual development of the regional carbon budgets, regional team members may have the option to co-author a series of papers on regional coastal carbon budgets and associated processes. Please contact any one of us if you are interested in participating.
Raymond Najjar (rgn1@psu.edu), Marjorie Friedrichs (marjy@vims.edu), and Wei-Jun Cai (wcai@uga.edu)