Regional Cruises

The PMEL Carbon Group is frequently involved in hydrographic cruises that provide information about regional carbon dynamics. These cruises may have a relatively small geographic range (such as the Puget Sound surveys conducted in partnership with NANOOS and PRISM) or they may be expeditions aimed at studying a particular process (such as the Southern Ocean GasEx cruise conducted in collaboration with NSF and NASA). These regional cruises help us to better understand unique marine regions or specific processes controlling the marine carbon cycle. They are an important component of our overall program because they can provide information that is difficult to collect and properly interpret from the large survey cruises we conduct as part of the U.S. Global Ocean Carbon and Repeat Hydrography Program which is part of the international GO-SHIP program or from the Large-Scale coastal Sections.