Work begins to establish a baseline carbon budget for U.S. coastlines

Determining whether estuaries and tidal wetlands are net emitters or absorbers of carbon dioxide is the object of a NASA-funded study by a national team of researchers. The three-year, $1.2-million study, led by Penn State professor of oceanography Raymond Najjar, is the first to look at the entire contiguous U.S. estuarine and tidal-wetland system, and the team will establish a long-term, baseline carbon budget over the past several decades—the period for which most coastal carbon data have been collected.