About the project
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.
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 regarded as the seagrasses and saltmarshes, and the majority of the carbon they contain is 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 interest is gathering in the role of both intertidal (mud banks) and subtidal (seabed) in the carbon cycle.
You will constrain the sequestration rates of carbon by marine sediments, both vegetated and non-vegetated. You will also 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. Based on the findings, you will therefore make policy and management recommendations directly to governance stakeholders.
You will also be supervised by organisations other than the University of Southampton, including:
- Lead supervisor Dr Claire Evans from the National Oceanography Centre
- Maija Marsh from Natural England
