The Coastal Carbon Group is an interdisciplinary research team within UNH-EOS engaged in efforts to observe and model how the Earth’s pool of carbon moves between the land, ocean, and atmosphere – with a particular focus on how this carbon cycling occurs in coastal regions such as our own Gulf of Maine.

Opportunities with the CCG for summer intern, undergraduate, or graduate research are available by contacting Dr. Joseph Salisbury, Dr. Douglas Vandemark or other team members. Enquiries are encouraged from students having backgrounds and interests in computer programming, mathematics, engineering, and/or the physical sciences. Our work is focused on three research areas:

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The role that coastal oceans play in changing atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas); including whether this CO2 exchange is altered by land runoff carried to sea by rivers or by the frequent occurrence of polluted low-level continental air parcels traveling to the New England coastline from the Mid-Atlantic states or the Midwest.

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Understanding the processing of carbon as it travels from upstream sites out into the Gulf of Maine- and how this processing influences coastal ecosystems.

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Using ocean viewing satellite data to detect and monitor air-sea CO2 exchange along our coast and out to sea.

These topics are all directed at the long-term societal need for more accurate prediction of climate change and for determining how the ocean ecosystem of the Gulf of Maine functions at time scales from weeks to years.