Ocean Deep Expedition
Exploring deep sea-mounts in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea: the TopoDeep Project
Single-celled plant life in the surface of the ocean (phytoplankton) takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and fixes it in organic carbon compounds. Some of this material sinks to the seafloor and is incorporated into underlying sediments, effectively removing carbon from circulation.
It is believed that over long geological time scales (thousands up to hundreds of millions of years), changes in the magnitude of organic-carbon deposition in deep-sea sediments can influence the chemical composition of the earth's atmosphere. Organic-carbon burial in deep-sea sediments must, therefore, be one of the key processes of the 'life-supporting system' on Earth.
This research aims to investigate the relationships between the movement of carbon from the water column into sediments and factors such as the seafloor structure and water flow.
In the first stage of a three-phase project, five SAMS researchers travelled to the Cape Verde Islands onboard the German research vessel RV Meteor, to study the Senghor Seamount.
Stage II is underway on the Eratosthenes Seamount in the Eastern Mediterranean.
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