Community building to explore the role of deltas as sources or sinks in the global carbon cycle

Connecting researchers of diverse backgrounds and expertise towards the aim of understanding how deltas operate in the global carbon cycle.

We offer webinars exploring the physical, temporal, and biogeochemical processes that modulate fluxes of carbon to and from global deltas. This leads to a 3-day workshop at Louisiana State University (U.S.) in Spring, 2025, engaging members of the community to explore themes of:
• human and climate-driven changes in ocean biogeochemistry and related marine ecosystem impacts
• carbon cycling, storage, uptake, and modulation at a critical land-ocean interface along the aquatic continuum
• sedimentary fluxes and benthic-pelagic coupling as they relate to C, nutrients, and other elemental cycles e.g., O2, Fe, Mn
• marine organism response to environmental changes associated with delta loss, subsidence, salinization, and other anthropogenic disturbances
• promotion of minoritized shareholders in inclusive and equitable scientific discussions of unprecedented impacts of human-driven changes to deltaic systems.

Based on these discussions we aim to write a community consensus paper, a global delta carbon budget infographic, and an AGU Eos perspective piece. The effort is funded by the U.S. Ocean Carbon & Biogeochemistry program (OCB) and includes collaborators at numerous U.S. and Dutch institutions (University of Colorado – Boulder, Louisiana State University, Utrecht University, Wageningen University, Northeastern University, and University of New Mexico).