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[1] While subsidence is widely recognized as a driver of geomorphic change in the northern Gulf of Mexico (GOM), there is considerable disagreement over the rates of subsidence and the interpreted variability in these rates, which leads to controversies over the impacts of subsidence on surface land area change. Here we present a new method to calculate subsidence rates from the tide gauge record that is based on an understanding of the meteorological drivers of inter-annual sea-level change. In Grand Isle, LA and Galveston, TX, we explicitly show that temporal patterns of subsidence are closely linked to subsurface fluid withdrawal and coastal land loss, and suggest changes in withdrawal rates can both increase and decrease rates of subsidence and wetland loss. Our results also imply that the volume of sediment needed to rebuild GOM wetlands may currently fall within the low end of some restoration scenarios. Citation: Kolker, A. S., M. A. Allison, and S. Hameed (2011), An evaluation of subsidence rates and sea-level variability in

1] Applying ramped pyrolysis radiocarbon analysis to suspended river sediments, we generate radiocarbon ( 14 C) age spectra for particulate organic carbon (POC) from the lower Mississippi-Atchafalaya River system (MARS) to better understand a major river system's role in carbon transport. Ramped pyrolysis 14 C analysis generates age distributions of bulk carbon based on thermochemical stability of different organic components. Our results indicate higher proportions of older material in the POC during higher discharge. Ages increase throughout the high-discharge age spectra, indicating that no single component of the POC is responsible for the overall age increases observed. Instead, older material is contributed across the POC age spectrum and unrelated to increased bedload suspension. In this comparison of 2 spring discharges, less than half of the POC transported during higher discharge is less than 1000 14 C years in age, constraining of the role of the MARS as a flux of atmospheric CO 2 toward longer-term sedimentary sinks in the Mississippi delta and the Gulf of Mexico. The results suggest that delta-building processes benefit disproportionately from high discharge events carrying larger amounts of sediment because these events involve both a higher proportion of millennially-aged carbon from floodplain exchange of POC and a potentially higher proportion of petrogenic carbon (30-530% increase). Overall, an internally consistent picture of PO 14 C age distributions from a major river system emerges, as differences in space and time are small compared to the range of ages of POC sources in such a large basin.

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