SECTION 3. MAREX PROJECT PLAN OBJECTIVES 



The objectives of the proposed MAREX project all center around processes 

 controlling carbon and nitrogen fluxes in the sea, with particular 

 emphasis on shelf transfer and recycling processes. Within this context 

 questions can be grouped into three major areas of research: 



a. C/N waste disposal, which constitutes the necessary understand- 

 ing for eventual applications of weather modification. 



b. Fisheries regulation. 



c. Specification of the assimilatory capacity of the sea. 

 3.1 C/N AND CLIMATE 



Uptake of COo during marine primary production (Table 1-1) is 10- to 



20-fold that of the fossil fuel C0 9 released from anthropogenic sources 



9 1 

 each year, but not retained in the atmosphere ( 2.5 x 10 tons C yr ). 



Two major unknown questions exist: 



a. What areal and temporal changes of shelf production have 

 occured over the last 100 years since the industrial 

 revolution? 



b. How much of the "missing" carbon of global C0 ? budgets is 

 stored in ungrazed, slowly decomposing phytodetritus (Table 1- 

 2)? 



As a result of agricultural fertilizers, urban sewage, and deforesta- 

 tion, for example, the nutrient content of major rivers (e.g., 

 Mississippi, Rhine, and Yantsze) is now 10-fold that of both the pre- 

 industrial riverine condition and the presumably unmodified nutrient con- 

 tent found in slope waters. 



In the form of fixed phytoplankton nitrogen, the ultimate fate of 

 increasing loadings of anthropogenic dissolved nitrogen must be explored 

 with an adequate time series of both satellite color sensors and moored 

 f luorometers. Past measurement of nitrogen production, remineraliza- 



3-1 



