My initial overarching focus question was: "What is the role of benthic organisms in the global carbon dioxide cycle? How do they respond to change?"

If you don't understand how the carbon cycle works in its entirety, you can start with a smaller piece of the puzzle - by learning how benthic marine organisms are connected to each other and play an important role in the carbon dioxide cycle. Benthic is a word that describes the bottom of the ocean. It is important to know that 99% of the sea floor is composed of mud. Examples of benthic organisms include clams, scallops, sea stars, hermit crabs, worms, sea slugs, sponges (and more!) The concept maps I helped to create in this workshop attempt to explain how environmental processes and disturbances affect benthic organisms that either successfully or unsuccessfully adapt to these changes.

With reflection upon my first concept map, I realized that this version was really more of an "assigned diagraph" than a true concept map - although they are very similar in some respects. This approach represented to me the best way to include all the detailed information I wanted to share in order to answer my focus question - at first pass. I used blue colors to indicate abiotic variables (e.g., grain size, light levels), and red colors to indicate biotic variables (e.g., predator and prey abundances). The diagraph depicts a whole system of variables that determine the abundance of "species X" - broken down into individual interactions with positive (+) or negative (-) effects depicted between concepts connected by linking lines with arrows. To be more specific, arrows point from the "causal variable" concept to its "affected variable" concept. For example, increases in streambed flow rates cause water column turbidity to also increase - equaling a positive (+) relationship. Some interactions can be two-way (instead of one-way) and are more complex: an arrow that shows negative effects in both directions would represent competition (e.g., increases in a competitor's abundance would mean decreases in species X's abundance, and vice versa) In hindsight, I see that change between variables can be more easily shown in a graphical representation (x and y axis plot) although a concept map can show relationships between multiple concepts to each other which is what I mean to do here.

As I worked with my team members on day two of the workshop to build a consensus map for new target audience (high school freshman), we decided to find a way to simplify the story a bit and highlight one portion of the global carbon cycle in which benthic organisms play a key role: transition of carbon into or out of the marine sediments. The five main processes presented in the final map include deposition, burial, mixing and respiration. Our map took on a completely different look as we thought about how best to address our audience and drive home one key message. Certain benthic organisms are indeed "gatekeepers". They can determine through their behaviors at the seafloor (e.g, bioturbation, burrowing) if temporary carbon deposition is left undisturbed for eventual permanent burial (deep sequestration), or if it is returned to the water column carbon pool. We also added the dimension of time in the form of "storage times" on the left-hand side of the map to further define the terms "temporary" versus "permanent" carbon storage for our audience.