Probing the future of Arctic marine productivity from the seabed (POLARIS)
Navn på bevillingshaver
Sofia Ribeiro
Titel
Professor
Institution
Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland
Beløb
DKK 12,725,669
År
2025
Bevillingstype
Semper Ardens: Accomplish
Hvad?
Arctic marine productivity, a major uncertainty under climate change, reflects how microscopic phytoplankton sequester carbon and generate organic matter. This project aims at improving predictions, by unlocking natural sediment archives from the seabed around Greenland and the Arctic Ocean, spanning the past ~1 million years, to reveal how Arctic marine ecosystems responded to past warm periods.
Hvorfor?
The Arctic region is warming rapidly, and is a sentinel for planetary change, yet we don’t know how marine phytoplankton - the base of the food web - will respond. Improving predictions on marine productivity is a pressing need, because carbon sequestration and organic matter production in Arctic waters impacts global climate, food security, Indigenous livelihoods, and international governance.
Hvordan?
We will integrate cutting-edge approaches: experimentally testing phytoplankton growth, recovering sedimentary ancient DNA, and analyzing trait changes from microfossil records. Combined with ecological models, these data will reveal species responses during past warmer-than-present interglacials and forecast Arctic marine productivity and ecosystem resilience under 21st-century climate scenarios.