Seminar: "Quantifying the ocean biological carbon pump using natural radionuclides", by Muntsa Roca

The Ocean's Challenge groups are organizing a new seminar.
 

Seminar: "Quantifying the ocean biological carbon pump using natural radionuclides"

Speaker: Muntsa Roca Martí, MERS group researcher
 

Date: Wednesday, December 13th, 2023
Time: 1pm
Venue: Room Z/032 and online  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81681944336?pwd=VlpBNnl6M1l3cUJaN3BROTI3N1I3Zz09

Radionuclides can provide key information on the temporal dimension of environmental processes given their well-known rates of radioactive decay and production. Since the 1990s, the naturally occurring radionuclides, thorium-234 and polonium-210, have been used as tracers to quantify the export of particulate organic carbon from the ocean surface to its interior via the ocean biological carbon pump (BCP). The BCP is a key component of the Earth’s carbon cycle which strongly influences climate, marine biogeochemistry, and ocean food-webs from phytoplankton to fish. Over the last years, major field campaigns have allowed the measurement of natural radionuclides at an unprecedented high resolution providing the opportunity to characterize the spatial and temporal variability of the BCP. In this talk, I will present an overview of what are we learning from these radiotracers as part of the largest interdisciplinary BCP project ever conducted (EXPORTS, https://oceanexports.org/).