St Andrews Research Repository

St Andrews University Home
View Item 
  •   St Andrews Research Repository
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • View Item
  •   St Andrews Research Repository
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • View Item
  •   St Andrews Research Repository
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • View Item
  • Login
JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

Quality not quantity : prioritizing the management of sedimentary organic matter across continental shelf seas

Thumbnail
View/Open
Smeaton_2022_GRL_Quality_CC.pdf (2.311Mb)
Date
14/03/2022
Author
Smeaton, Craig
Austin, William
Keywords
Carbon
Sediment
Organic matter
Bottom trawling
Reactivity
CRI
Index
Disturbance
Anthropogenic
United Kingdom
Scotland
Climate
Organic carbon
GE Environmental Sciences
GC Oceanography
QE Geology
Earth-Surface Processes
Global and Planetary Change
Oceanography
Environmental Science (miscellaneous)
DAS
SDG 13 - Climate Action
SDG 14 - Life Below Water
Metadata
Show full item record
Altmetrics Handle Statistics
Altmetrics DOI Statistics
Abstract
Disturbance of marine sediments results in the remineralization of sedimentary organic matter (OM) and impacts upon natural burial processes. Management interventions which restrict or remove activities that cause seabed disturbance may offer effective strategies to protect the most vulnerable of these shelf sea OM stores, offering new opportunities to deliver climate mitigation actions. While the largest quantities of OM are often stored in the expansive offshore regions of continental shelves and might therefore suggest appropriate zones for management interventions to protect vulnerable OM stores, our results highlight that these offshore regions generally contain OM of low reactivity. Conversely, inshore and coastal sediments store significant quantities of highly reactive OM that is at greater risk of remineralization when disturbed. The marked spatial disparities between OM reactivity across shelf sea sedimentary environments highlights the need to focus emergent policy and future management interventions towards the protection of inshore and coastal sediments.
Citation
Smeaton , C & Austin , W 2022 , ' Quality not quantity : prioritizing the management of sedimentary organic matter across continental shelf seas ' , Geophysical Research Letters , vol. 49 , no. 5 , e2021GL097481 . https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL097481
Publication
Geophysical Research Letters
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL097481
ISSN
0094-8276
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2022. The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Description
The Scottish Blue Carbon Forum (Scottish Government) funded this research.
Collections
  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/25044

Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Advanced Search

Browse

All of RepositoryCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateNamesTitlesSubjectsClassificationTypeFunderThis CollectionBy Issue DateNamesTitlesSubjectsClassificationTypeFunder

My Account

Login

Open Access

To find out how you can benefit from open access to research, see our library web pages and Open Access blog. For open access help contact: openaccess@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Accessibility

Read our Accessibility statement.

How to submit research papers

The full text of research papers can be submitted to the repository via Pure, the University's research information system. For help see our guide: How to deposit in Pure.

Electronic thesis deposit

Help with deposit.

Repository help

For repository help contact: Digital-Repository@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Give Feedback

Cookie policy

This site may use cookies. Please see Terms and Conditions.

Usage statistics

COUNTER-compliant statistics on downloads from the repository are available from the IRUS-UK Service. Contact us for information.

© University of St Andrews Library

University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland, No SC013532.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter