Carbon fluxes
Inland waters are major contributors to the global carbon cycle. Global CO2 fluxes from inland waters into the atmosphere are of the same order of magnitude than the the CO2 fluxes fro the atmosphere into the oceans. The extent and drivers of CO2 fluxes in alpine streams remain poorly understood. With this project, part of the ITN C-CASCADES, we study the effects of alpine stream network expansion and retraction as well as of groundwater on CO2 evasion fluxes. Furthermore, we attempt to quantify the CO2 evasion fluxes of the small streams from the world’s mountains. This is relevant given that mountains contribute up to 25% to the non-glacierized surface area of our continents. Despite this, they have not yet been properly considered in global and regional estimates of carbon fluxes.
PhD student: Åsa Horgby; EPFL Scientists: Lluis Gómez Gener, Amber Ulseth (now at Sam Houston State University, USA); Collaboration: Prof. Torsten Vennemann UNIL
Further information: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/193982/factsheet/en
