The Leaky Deltas OCB workshop was held 17-20 March 2025 at Louisiana State University, in Baton Rouge, USA, which is situated within the Mississippi River delta. We brought together 57 members of the research community who study river deltas in the context of the global carbon cycle. The goal of the workshop was to create […]
Read MoreThank you for another inspiring OCB workshop! Recordings of the plenary sessions will be available in 1-2 months on the OCB YouTube Channel, and we will post an announcement here.
February 4: Gerrit Trapp-Müller, Fei Da, and Gabriella Akpah Yeboah
October 24: Robert Twilley and Marc Simard
September 26: Muriel Bruckner and Anastasia Pillouras
May 30: Bob Aller
April 18: Bin Zhao and Thomas Bianchi
March 14: Christophe Rabouille
River deltas and the adjacent coastal ocean are critical interfaces between terrestrial and oceanic environments. Deltas are the entry point of ~50% of the fresh water and 40% of all global particulate matter entering the ocean. They are major centers for particulate and dissolved organic carbon net transfer from land to ocean.
Recent evidence suggests that coastal oceans have become net sink for atmospheric CO2 during post-industrial times and continued human pressures in coastal zones and alterations to deltas will likely have an important impact on the future evolution of the coastal ocean’s carbon budget.
Despite the importance of deltas and blue carbon ecosystems to the global carbon cycle and coastal communities, land-to-ocean parameterizations in Earth System models are highly simplified and do not mechanistically include many of the processes involved in cycling carbon in these areas.
Significant and critical knowledge gaps on processes, their impacts on marine biogeochemistry, and the direction of future change exist—this workshop aims to address those knowledge gaps.
We will bring together scientists who are committed to exploring the physical, temporal, and biogeochemical processes that modulate fluxes of carbon to and from global deltas.
This scoping workshop will utilize momentum from the OCB 2023 Summer Workshop plenary session focused on deltaic systems to build a network of modelers, experimentalists, and field scientists working on deltas in this era of unprecedented climate change and other anthropogenic stresses, and will address and advance several OCB mission-specific topics:
Shaily Rahman (UC Boulder)
Kanchan Maiti (LSU)
Jaap Nienhuis (Utrecht University)
Cristina Schultz (Northeastern University)
Elizabeth Chamberlain (Wageningen University)
Julia Moriarty (CU Boulder)
Marisa Repasch (University of New Mexico)
WORKSHOP TOPICS
Ocean biogeochemistry – Influence of delta systems on adjacent coastal ocean in terms of carbon cycle (DIC/ALK/pCO2) both in water column and sediment, carbon burial and lateral transport of carbon.
Ecosystems – Role of salt marshes, mangroves, and sea grass on carbon retention and burial in delta plain and net export to adjacent ocean; reconstructions and forecasts of the distribution of these coastal ecosystems.
Novel methods and integration – Employing new technologies, e.g., chronology, remote sensing, to reconstruct and monitor delta change; integrating field and model data to study processes and change across timescales (past, present, and future).
Connectivity – Variability in hydrological connectivity across delta plain and delta shelf and its impact on carbon consumption, transport and retention.
Perturbations – Impact of climate and human driven changes including extreme events on delta carbon cycling.
Biogeochemical modeling: including mechanistic understanding of carbon cycling in the land-to-ocean continuum in global models, parameterizations of blue carbon ecosystems in high-resolution ocean models, quantifying organic and inorganic carbon transfers from deltas to theocean.
PRE-WORKSHOP
Objectives
Activities
OUTCOMES
The workshop aims to develop knowledge and define future research needs on the role of deltas in the global carbon cycle while building an interdisciplinary community around this understudied yet critical aspect of ocean biochemistry. To distribute these outcomes to the broader community there will be a consensus paper, a global delta carbon budget infographic, and an AGU Eos piece.
Role of deltaic sediments in regulating biogeochemical cycles (Chairs: Shaily Rahman, Jessica Luo, Cristina Schultz)
OCB2023 PLENARY SESSION TALKS (recorded June 2023)
Watch the informational webinar recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXw9ZspNhP8
OCB will have a booth at the OSM24 exhibitor hall – come see us there during open hours. SSC members and Project Office staff will be at the booth to talk all things OCB and answer your questions about getting more involved.
Stay tuned for OCB-hosted sessions and town halls during OSM.
Given the broad and thriving mCDR landscape, the OCB SSC recently developed a Principles of Engagement document to help guide new research activities, collaborations, and communications around mCDR. Read the document HERE.
Carbon dioxide removal is an ineffective time machine
We are currently looking to identify diverse stakeholders in the Southeast who would like to connect with the Southeast regional node – find more information about the node below, and if interested please fill out this interest form and feel free to share widely.
We are currently looking to identify diverse stakeholders in California who would like to connect with the California Current regional node – please fill out this interest form.
Stanley, R, T Bell, Y Gao, C Gaston, D Ho, D Kieber, K Mackey, N Meskhidze, B Miller, H Potter, P Vlahos, P Yager, B Alexander, S Beaupre, S Craig, G Cutter, S Emerson, A Frossard, S Gasso, B Haus, W Keene, W Landing, R Moore, D Ortiz-Suslow, J Palter, F Paulot, E Saltzman, D Thornton, A Wozniak, L Zamora, H Benway. 2021. US SOLAS Science Report. 62pp. DOI 10.1575/1912/27821 Download the PDF
January 2023: OAIC-hosted SOLAS Seminar IV: The ABC’s of the sea surface microlayer: Aerosols, Bubbles, and Composition Watch the recording (for more related content see more SOLAS Seminars)
December 14, 2023 at 6:30 pm
OAIC Networking event during Fall AGU immediately following poster session Surface Ocean-Lower Atmosphere Study (SOLAS): 20 Years of Progress and Developments in Ocean-Atmosphere Science
Location: Shelby’s Rooftop Lounge, 250 4th St, San Francisco, CA
With an increasingly wide variety of technology and innovations, from buoys to satellites, we now understand the open ocea n better than ever. Yet, existing technologies cannot cost-effectively provide accurate, up-to-date data on coastal and shelf ocean environments, especially beneath the surface. These dynamic regions impact billions of people in profound and varied ways.
Figure caption: Alongside other major global ocean observing technologies and networks, the Fishing Vessel Ocean Observing Network is built around the concept of “fishing for data” to collect high-quality ocean data such as temperature and salinity profiles. These measurements inform critical policy decisions, are integrated into sustainability efforts for fishers, scientists, and other relevant stakeholders, and can improve climate resiliency while protecting the health, well-being, and livelihoods of coastal communities and participants in the blue economy.
As described in a recent publication, the Fishing Vessel Ocean Observing Network (FVON) is reimagining the global data collection paradigm of coastal and shelf oceans by partnering with fishers and regional observation networks around the world. With more than four million fishing vessels worldwide, fishers cover much of the data-sparse nearshore ocean environments, vitally important regions of the ocean. By outfitting sensors onto vessels and on fishing gear, programs from New Zealand to Japan to New England, including researchers at WHOI, demonstrate that fishers can participate actively in the ongoing data revolution and eliminate critical oceanic data gaps without changing their standard fishing activities. Exponentially increasing the scale of data collection through fishing vessel and gear-based observations in nearshore marine environments has and will continue to democratize ocean observation, improve weather forecasting and ocean monitoring, and promote sustainable fishing while safeguarding lives and livelihoods. Already a proven concept regionally, FVON, alongside fishers and regional observation networks, will expand fishing-based observation to a global initiative.
Authors
Cooper Van Vranken (Ocean Data Network)
Julie Jakoboski (MetOcean Solutions, New Zealand)
John W. Carroll (Ocean Data Network)
Christopher Cusack (Environmental Defense Fund)
Patrick Gorringe (Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute)
Naoki Hirose (Kyushu University, Japan)
James Manning (NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center (retired))
Michela Martinelli (National Research Council−Institute of Marine Biological Resources and Biotechnologies, Italy)
Pierluigi Penna (National Research Council−Institute of Marine Biological Resources and Biotechnologies, Italy)
Mathew Pickering (Environmental Defense Fund)
A. Miguel Piecho-Santos (Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere)
Moninya Roughan (University of New South Wales, Australia)
João de Souza (MetOcean Solutions, New Zealand)
Hassan Moustahfid (NOAA Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS))
To maintain marine ecosystem health and human well-being, it is important to understand coastal water quality changes. Water clarity is a key component of water quality, which can be measured in situ by tools such as Secchi disks or by satellites with high spatial and temporal coverage. Coastal environments pose unique challenges to remote sensing, sometimes resulting in inaccurate estimates of water clarity.
Figure caption: Maps of model-corrected Landsat-8 derived Secchi depths from monthly clear sky images (2019–2021).
In this study, we couple low-cost in situ methods (Secchi disk depths) with open-access, high-resolution satellite (Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2) data to improve estimates of water clarity in a shallow, turbid lagoon in Virginia, USA. Our model allows the retrieval of water clarity data across an entire water body and when field measurements are unavailable. This approach can be implemented in dynamic coastal water bodies with limited in situ measurements (e.g., as part of routine water quality monitoring). This can improve our understanding of water clarity changes and their drivers to better predict how water quality may change in the future. Improved water clarity predictions can lead to better coastal ecosystem management and human well-being.
Figure caption: Workflow for obtaining Secchi disk depth with l2gen in NASA SeaDAS, bio-optical algorithms, and empirical adjustments.
Authors
Sarah E. Lang (University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography)
Kelly M.A. Luis (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology)
Scott C. Doney (University of Virginia)
Olivia Cronin-Golomb (University of Virginia)
Max C.N. Castorani (University of Virginia)
Twitter / Mastodon
@sarah_langsat8 on Twitter
@kelly_luis1 on Twitter
@scottdoney@universeodon.com on Mastodon
@ocronin_golomb on Twitter
@MaxCastorani on Twitter
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Funding for the Ocean Carbon & Biogeochemistry Project Office is provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The OCB Project Office is housed at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.