'Hearing the full symphony': advancing our understanding of the carbon cycle through continuous monitoring of dissolved organic carbon export.

该项目将通过开发测量水中溶解的有机碳浓度的传感器，揭示碳从陆地景观到水生环境的输出信息。目前，这种理解通常是根据样本构建的，缺乏细节。根据采样频率，碳输出的重要时期可能仍未被发现。通过高频原位测量捕获细节，将为计算溶解有机碳输出的准确预算提供信息，并深入了解环境如何控制景观中的碳损失。这些见解将在许多方面带来社会和科学进步，从计算风电场需要多长时间才能收回建设中消耗的碳（建设可能会影响陆地碳储存，随后反映在水生出口中），到将河流从陆地转移到海洋的严格模型纳入全球碳循环模型。伴随着量化 DOC 输出的传感器的开发，将同时通过应用拉曼光谱来表征 DOC 成分。如果这种方法被证明是可行的，如果时间允许（最终取决于学生的进度），博士培训计划还将探索开发用于记录原位拉曼光谱的现场可部署传感器。在短期内（本次学生资助），提出的研究计划将进一步加深我们对几个NERC基础研究优先事项的理解，即“地球系统内碳的来源、汇和运输过程是什么？”、“碳循环如何受到其他主要生物地球化学循环的影响和整合？”，因此适合NERC的关键战略和科学优先事项。然而，由于研究项目需要跨学科（生物地球化学、统计建模和电子学）的培训和专业知识发展，这将在智力上具有挑战性，因此 NERC 培训投资的长期回报是培养智力灵活的个人，以应对未来新兴的跨学科研究挑战。事实上，该博士培训计划开发了最近被确定为环境部门关键技能差距的十五种关键技能中的六种（ERFF 报告编号，环境部门最需要的技能需求），即（时间序列）建模、数据管理、计算、多学科、实地工作和淡水科学方面的专业知识。

This project will, through the development of a sensor to measure the concentration of organic carbon dissolved in water, reveal information on the export of carbon from terrestrial landscapes to aquatic environments. At present, this understanding, generally constructed from grab samples, lacks detail. Dependent on sampling frequency, important periods of carbon export may remain undetected. Capturing detail, through high frequency in-situ measurement, will inform the calculation of accurate budgets of dissolved organic carbon export and provide insight into how the environment controls loss of carbon from the landscape. Such insights will offer societal and scientific advances in many ways, ranging from calculating how long for a windfarm takes to payback carbon expended in construction (construction may impact on terrestrial storage of carbon, later reflected in aquatic export), to incorporating rigourous models of how much carbon is transferred by rivers from land to sea, into global carbon cycle models. Accompanying development of the sensor to quantify DOC export will be contemporaneous characterisation of DOC composition by application of Raman spectroscopy. Should this approach prove viable, if time permits (ultimately dependent on student progress) the doctoral training programme will also explore development of field deployable sensors for logging of in-situ Raman spectra. On the short-term timescale (of this studentship), the research programme proposed will further our understanding of several NERC fundamental research priorities, namely, 'What are the sources, sinks and transportation processes of C within the earth system?', 'How is the carbon cycle influenced and integrated by other major biogeochemical cycles?', and thus is appropriate for NERC's key strategic and scientific priorities. However as the research programme will require training and expertise development across disciplines (biogeochemistry, statistical modelling and electronics), and this will be intellectually challenging, the longer term return from such NERC training investment is an intellectually flexible individual, positioned to address future emerging, inter-disciplinary research challenges. Indeed this doctoral training programme develops six of the fifteen key skills recently indentified as critical skill gaps for the environment sector (ERFF Report Number, Most Wanted Skill Needs in the Environment Sector), namely expertise in modelling (of time series), data management, numeracy, multi-disciplinarity, fieldwork and freshwater science.