Blue Carbon sequestration in the coastal ocean
This is a suggestion for a Degree Project for Bachelor's and Master's levels at the Department of Marine Sciences. Degree projects at the Department of Marine Sciences are done independently and must be written and assessed individually.
Subject: Marine Chemistry
Level: BSc and MSc
Contact: Prof. Isaac Santos
Field work: Sweden, Norway, Brazil, and Germany
Project background
Coastal vegetated ecosystems (mangroves, saltmarshes, seagrass beds and macroalgae forests) are hotspots in the marine carbon cycle.
Preserving these blue carbon ecosystems has been touted as an effective approach to sequester carbon and mitigate climate change.
Project description
This project will quantify the carbon sequestration capacity of blue carbon ecosystems. The student will engage with a larger research group building detailed carbon budgets from source to sink across the continental shelf using a combination of state-of-the-art geochemical approaches to quantify the source, transformations and the ultimate fate of blue carbon.
The techniques include geochemical tracers, automated observations, and molecular markers.
The specific research performed by the student will fit in the broad Blue Carbon topic, and will be discussed with the supervisor to match the student’s interests. The research may involve collaboration with different colleagues in the department, and PhD students in Prof. Isaac Santos’s group.
Overall, the science will help to create new arguments for preserving or rehabilitating threatened blue carbon systems and maximize natural carbon sequestration.
Field work
Field work is planned for Swedish seagrass beds, Norwegian kelp forests, Brazilian mangroves, and German saltmarshes.
Contact
Prof. Isaac Santos
Email: isaac.santos@gu.se