Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Relative Impacts Of Global Changes And Regional Watershed Changes On The Inorganic Carbon Balance Of The Chesapeake Bay, Pierre St-Laurent, Marjorie A.M. Friedrichs, Raymond G. Najjar, Elizabeth Shadwick, Hanquin Tian, Yuanzhi Yao

VIMS Articles

The Chesapeake Bay is a large coastal-plain estuary that has experienced considerable anthropogenic changeover the past century. At the regional scale, land-use change has doubled the nutrient input from rivers and led to an increase in riverine carbon and alkalinity. The bay has also experienced global changes, including the rise of atmospheric temperature and CO2. Here we seek to understand the relative impact of these changes on the inorganic carbon balance of the bay between the early 1900s and the early 2000s. We use a linked land–estuarine–ocean modeling system that includes both inorganic and organic carbon and nitrogen cycling. Sensitivity …