| Mississippi Basin Carbon Project Science Plan |
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The MBCP will take advantage of a wide array of relevant spatial data available for the Mississippi River basin. These data are summarized in Table 1.
In addition to the spatial data summarized in Table 1, we will make use of available data on sediment transport and composition within the Mississippi River basin. A particularly promising source of data is the Mississippi River Project, a USGS study of mass transport along the mainstem of the Mississippi River during the years 1987 to 1992 (Meade, 1995). This study provided an exceptional description of carbon transport at the largest spatial scale within the basin. The project focused on obtaining representative samples of water and sediment from various cross sections of the mainstem and mouths of the larger tributaries. The most sophisticated non-contaminating depth-integrated sampling technologies were used (Meade and Stevens, 1990, Moody and Meade, 1994, Rees and others, 1991). Much of the focus was on the transport of contaminants and how these were partitioned among dissolved, colloidal, and particulate forms. This required characterization of the natural organics within the river system (Leenheer, 1991, 1994). The distribution and transport of organic contaminants could then be characterized in terms of the movement of dissolved and particulate organic carbon (Barber and others, 1995). Data have been compiled (Barber and others, 1995b, Leenheer and others, 1995 a,b) and are available to the Mississippi Basin Carbon Project. In addition to these data, representative subsamples of suspended sediment (frozen) and organic isolates (freeze dried) are available to this project for use in further characterization.
| Contents |
| Approach |
| Land surface characterization and analysis |