Coastal Carbon Fluxes for Eastern North America

Mean annual fluxes of inorganic, organic, and total carbon are estimated for three coastal ecosystem types across eastern North America. The dataset, produced by NASA, provides per-unit-area and spatially integrated values for tidal wetlands, estuaries, and shelf waters. It synthesizes data from multiple sources covering a period from roughly 1976 to 2017.

Use Cases

• Quantifying net carbon uptake from the atmosphere by tidal wetlands, estuaries, and shelf waters.
• Analyzing lateral carbon transport between ecosystems via advective flux estimates.
• Comparing carbon burial rates in wetland soils, estuarine sediments, and continental shelf sediments.
• Assessing ecosystem productivity using computed net primary production (NPP) and net ecosystem production (NEP) values.
• Regional carbon budget modeling for subregions like the Gulf of Maine, Mid-Atlantic Bight, and South Atlantic Bight.

Strengths

• Provides a synthesized carbon budget across three interconnected coastal ecosystem types.
• Includes uncertainty estimates for all flux calculations.
• Covers a multi-decadal time period of approximately 41 years (1976-2017).
• Offers data aggregated at multiple spatial scales: per ecosystem, subregion, and the entire eastern North America domain.

Limitations

• Specific row count, column names, and dataset size are not provided on any platform.
• There is a conflict in the 'last updated' metadata: one platform lists 2026-03 13 (likely an administrative error), while another lists 2017-12-31 (the data end date).
• The license is specified only as 'other-license-specified' without explicit details.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Derived from a variety of sources to create best estimates for average conditions over past decades.

Time Range

1976-01-01 to 2017-12-31

Freshness

2017-12-31 23:59:59.999000

Geography

Eastern North America coastline from the Scotian Peninsula (Canada) to the southern tip of Florida (USA), including the Gulf of Maine, Mid-Atlantic Bight, and South Atlantic Bight subregions.