For more detailed information, please see the CARBONATE project website
Along the European Atlantic continental margin, recent to young fossil carbonate mounds and build-ups by cold-water corals occur from northern Norway to the Gulf of Cadiz with an emerging global distribution pattern showing a European concentration. Up to now the carbonate stored in carbonate mounds has NOT been considered in any global carbonate budget or linked to any global carbon budget involving greenhouse gases. A major challenge exists to quantify the amount and flux of carbon stored by these newly discovered areas of enhanced carbonate accumulation in intermediate water depth (e.g. carbonate mounds).
In European waters, carbonate mounds occur as giant mounds in distinct mound provinces as well as smaller low profile mounds. Europe is in a unique position to champion carbonate mound research providing that appropriate sedimentary sequences through mounds are made accessible. Therefore, this project follows up on the successful tradition of European cold-water coral and carbonate mound research under European Framework Program 5 and 6. Investigations of short sediment cores revealed that all mounds possess different growth histories depending on the environmental setting and the involved faunal associations. Unfortunately, these cores only penetrated the upper few meters of the mounds thus limiting mound research to the very late stage of mound development. The only existing integrative cold-water coral carbonate budget that has only been performed on post-glacial cores relevant to the Norwegian shelf only. What is still unclear is the long-term carbonate budget for carbonate mounds in different environmental settings, including the influences of climate change on this process, and the role of the mounds in the global carbon cycle. By understanding how biogeochemical processes control the development of these carbonate mounds and their response to climate change, we will make an important step in quantifying their role as mid-latitude carbonate sinks.
Project Leader:
Dr. Andrew Wheeler
University College Cork, Ireland
Principal Investigators:
Professor André Freiwald
University of Erlangen, Germany
Professor Dierk Hebbeln
University of Bremen, Germany
Professor Rudy Swennen
Catholic University of Leuven, Heverlee, Belgium
Professor Tjeerd van Weering
Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), Den Burg, The Netherlands
