The Deep Carbon Observatory, a decade-long $500 million research project to discover the quantity, movement, origin, and forms of carbon deep inside the Earth, has released a landmark 700-page book, Carbon in Earth, which outlines questions that will guide the program through 2019 and beyond.

The research program, which includes URI scientists Steven D’Hondt, Katherine Kelley and Dawn Cardace, is investigating the movement of deep carbon in the slow convection of the mantle, the percolating fluids of the crust, and the violent emissions from volcanoes. It is searching for the ancient origin of deep carbon and the formation and transformation of its many forms, ranging from gas and oil to diamonds and deep microbes.

The Deep Carbon Observatory is also making a significant commitment to an international engagement and communications effort, led by Sara Hickox and Sunshine Menezes at URI’s Office of Marine Programs and funded through a grant to the Graduate School of Oceanography from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

The new book, details of the Observatory program, and a new website (www.deepcarbon.net) were announced on March 4 at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.

Ninety percent or more of Earth’s carbon is thought to be locked away or in motion deep underground—a hidden dimension of the planet as poorly understood as it is profoundly important to life on the surface, according to scientists.

For more information, please see the related press release.

Photo: from left to right, Dawn Cardace, Steven D’Hondt, Katherine Kelley