PLEASE NOTE: Application deadline date 08 Jan 2024. Applications are no longer being accepted for this project
Project Overview
Marine sediments contain massive amounts of ‘blue carbon’ isolated from the atmosphere for millennia. Net carbon flux into sediments and the influence of human activity and changing climate is poorly quantified. You will investigate factors influencing the accumulation, loss and fate of carbon in sediments to inform marine management strategies.
Project Description
The restoration and protection of coastal vegetated ecosystems has been proposed as a nature-based solution to mitigating climatic change given the ability of these habitats to rapidly sequester carbon and keep it locked out of the atmosphere for millennia. In the UK such ecosystems are predominantly seagrasses and saltmarshes, and the majority of the carbon being deposited into the underlying sediments. Marine management strategies to conserve vegetated ecosystems, termed ‘Blue Carbon’, are the focus of intense interest since they also promote coastal ‘health’ and offer biodiversity and ecosystem service co-benefits. Many questions still remain regarding the rate and permanence of carbon sequestered in these habitats. Non-vegetated marine sediments also act as a significant carbon store, and the role of both intertidal (mud banks) and subtidal (seabed) in the carbon cycle is of importance. You will constrain the sequestration rates of carbon by marine sediments, (both vegetated and non-vegetated) and investigate the natural loss (or leakage) of carbon from marine sediments into seawater and its potential fate. Specifically, you will examine whether sedimentary material transferred into the seawater is available to be metabolized by microbes, and thereby converted to carbon dioxide. Finally, processes such as anthropogenic disturbance and climatic change will be examined for their potential to impact marine sedimentary carbon stocks, and thereby indicate how the ocean’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide could change into the future. The project will be conducted in partnership with Natural England and thereby have direct, real-world application, providing policy and management recommendations directly to governance stakeholders.
The INSPIRE DTP programme provides comprehensive personal and professional development training alongside extensive opportunities for students to expand their multi-disciplinary outlook through interactions with a wide network of academic, research and industrial/policy partners. The student will be registered at the University of Southampton and hosted jointly with the National Oceanography Centre and in partnership with Natural England. Specific training will include: the design and execution of marine sediment coring campaigns; core processing and state-of-the-art analysis by destructive and non-destructive techniques at BOSCORF | British Ocean Sediment Core Research Facility and the GAU-Radioanalytical Laboratories (GAU), University of Southampton as well as the NOC. Elemental analysis coupled mass spectrometry will be used to determine carbon stocks and the stable isotopic ratios. X-ray spectrometry will examine broader elemental composition. You will be trained in using this data for forensic examination of sediment histories and to trace the origin of remobilized organic matter.
Macreadie, P.I., Costa, M.D.P., Atwood, T.B. et al. Blue carbon as a natural climate solution. Nat Rev Earth Environ 2, 826–839 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-021-00224-1
Sala, E., Mayorga, J., Bradley, D. et al. Protecting the global ocean for biodiversity, food and climate. Nature 592, 397–402 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03371-z
Atwood, T., Witt, Mayorga, Hammill, Sala E. Global Patterns in Marine Sediment Carbon Stocks Sec. Marine Biogeochemistry 7 (2020) https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2020.00165
