About the project
Quantify the frequency and volumes of sediment delivered to deep-sea basins from high-to-low latitudes along the Eastern Atlantic and determine underpinning controls.
Quantify the organic carbon sequestered in turbidites in deep-sea basins to establish geological fluxes of carbon from hinterland to abyssal plains, and whether there is a long-term climate influence.
Long-term burial of labile organic carbon within sediments represents a potentially important process mediating atmospheric carbon dioxide. Large quantities of labile organic carbon are supplied to and buried in deep-sea fans by submarine canyons linked to major rivers1. High quantities of organic carbon have also been identified in submarine canyons disconnected from major rivers. Furthermore, while efficient burial systems like the Bengal Fan have been identified, inefficient systems cause previously buried labile organic carbon to return to the global carbon cycle.
There is a need to robustly determine how much organic carbon is being transported to and buried within deep-sea basins. Here, a systematic approach is adopted to assess carbon transport and burial within numerous deep-sea basins with different sources, pathways, efficiencies and climate regimes. Spatio-temporal distributions of turbidites within deep-sea basins in the Atlantic can provide volumes and frequencies of past sediment flows. The compositions of these sediments (geochemistry, petrography and organic carbon) will provide details of provenance and carbon content and type. These data will allow calculation of carbon budgets for individual basins that can be compared to appreciate different efficiencies of carbon transport and burial, and appreciate different other controlling factors. Key questions of carbon burial will be addressed:
- What is the frequency and volume of turbidites deposited in Atlantic deep sea basins?
- What is the source, composition, burial efficiency and burial rate of organic carbon within deep-sea basins?
- Is carbon preferentially sequestered by different turbidity current processes?
- What are the rates and efficiency of carbon burial in deep-sea basins in the North Atlantic?
Supervisory team
The supervisory team includes supervisors from several organisations, including our INSPIRE Partners. Please contact the Lead Supervisor for more information about the team.
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Training
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 in the Marine Geosystems Group at the National Oceanography Centre. Specific training will include:
- Sediment core preparation and non-destructive analyses (Itrax micro-XRF, p-wave velocity, magnetic susceptibility, photospectrometry)
- Geochemical sample preparation, analysis and data interpretation (TOC, carbon-isotope, palynology)
- Extraction and isolation of organic compounds from sedimentary rocks
- Training in gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, GC-isotope ratio-mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography- mass spectrometry
- Scientific presenting and writing
Students will be able to expand their research abilities through learning and applying numerous different analytical methodologies and networking between different project partners. The student will perform sediment core analyses at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton and the on-site British Ocean Sediment Core Research Facility (BOSCORF) and LDEO. Organic geochemical analysis will be performed in the Organic Geochemistry laboratory in the School of Ocean and Earth Science.
