Dear OCB Colleagues:

In late June, the OCB Project Office sent out a call for participation in the Coastal Interim Synthesis Activity as part of the North American Carbon Program (NACP) Interim Synthesis Activities. The objective of this activity is to stimulate the synthesis and publication of recent observational and modeling results on carbon cycle fluxes and processes along the North American continental margin.  The current state of knowledge of the magnitude, spatial distribution, and inter-annual variability of carbon sources and sinks in coastal waters is incomplete.  Thus, the goal of this activity is to synthesize individual, small-scale studies across broader spatial and temporal scales to improve quantitative assessments of the North American coastal carbon cycle.  Because the coastal oceans have important and complex linkages with terrestrial, atmospheric, and open ocean biogeochemical cycles, we encourage the participation of researchers focused on both organic and inorganic carbon, as well as nitrogen and phosphorous cycle topics related to carbon balance and related issues such as hypoxia impacts on continental margins.

At the OCB summer workshop, we organized a breakout session to begin planning the coastal synthesis activity. We have broken down the proposed coastal synthesis activity into six U.S. geographical sub-regions (Atlantic Coast, Pacific Coast, Gulf Coast, Arctic Coast, Laurentian Great Lakes, and River/Estuary Systems), and we have identified leads for each region. At this time, we encourage you to take stock of your ongoing projects and think about how you might contribute to one or more of the regional syntheses. We invite you to visit the NACP website (http://www.nacarbon.org/cgi-bin/working_groups/wg.pl) and join a coastal synthesis activity. Click on the email list link for your region of interest, and you will be prompted to enter your email address and set up a password. Regional leads will initiate contact with their regional groups via these emails lists very soon. To facilitate communication between and within the regional coastal synthesis groups, we have also set up a wiki  (<http://coastalcarbon.pbwiki.com>).

NACP researchers will present some of the findings of the NACP Interim Synthesis Activity at the 2009 2nd NACP All-Investigators Meeting, which will be held February 17-20, 2009 in San Diego, CA (http://www.nacarbon.org/meeting_2009/). Although the coastal synthesis activity is in its introductory phase, we are planning to participate in this meeting. In addition to poster and breakout sessions, there will be a dedicated plenary session for the Coastal Interim Synthesis Activity. Once discussions are underway within and among regional groups, we will coordinate our input to this meeting.

We look forward to your participation in this very important and timely activity, which will inevitably guide future carbon flux research in continental margin settings.

Sincerely,

The OCB Project Office

Scott Doney, Heather Benway, Mary Zawoysky