Project: Pivers Island Coastal Observatory

From the project website:
Carbon dioxide is rising at ~3% per year in the atmosphere and oceans leading to increases in dissolved inorganic carbon and a reduction in pH. This trend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future and ocean pH is predicted to decrease substantially making the ocean more acidic, potentially affecting the marine ecosystem. However, coastal estuaries are highly dynamic systems that often experience dramatic changes in environmental variables over short periods of times. In this study, the investigators are measuring key variables of the marine carbon system along with other potential forcing variables and characteristics of the ecosystem that may be affected by these pH changes. The goal of this project is to determine the time-scales and magnitude of natural variability that will be superimposed on any long term trends in ocean chemistry.

This project is associated with Ocean Acidification: microbes as sentinels of adaptive responses to multiple stressors: contrasting estuarine and open ocean environments.