MARUM Research Academy

Incorporation of aged carbon from the ocean floor into the marine carbon cycle and its sediment record

Fluid and gas emissions from the ocean floor are found worldwide and can strongly impact the surrounding marine environments. Even though these emissions might significantly impact future climate, only a few studies provide evidence of incorporating aged carbon into the water column in marine environments. It is still unclear if solely chemoautotrophs directly at vents or seeps are responsible for the uptake of aged carbon or if this aged carbon signal reaches the upper water column and can be taken up by photoautotrophy.

For investigating the uptake of aged carbon by chemo- and photoautotrophy I am examining the microbial communities around hydrothermal vents and methane seeps. I plan to use compound-specific δ¹³C values and radiocarbon ages to trace the uptake of aged carbon in lipids of chemo- and photoautotrophs in the sediment and within the water column.

This Ph.D. pro­ject is part of the re­se­arch unit of the MARUM Ex­cel­lence Clus­ter “The Oce­an Floor as RECORDER - Per­tur­ba­ti­ons in the Earth sys­tem”. My af­fi­lia­ti­on at MARUM is the Molecular Paleoclimatology group, whe­re I am ad­vi­sed by Dr. Enno Schefuß.