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

该项目将通过开发一种传感器来测量溶解在水中的有机碳的浓度，揭示从陆地景观到水生环境的碳输出的信息。目前，这种理解通常是通过抓取样本构建的，缺乏细节。取决于采样频率，碳输出的重要时期可能仍未被检测到。通过高频现场测量捕捉细节，将为计算溶解有机碳出口的准确预算提供信息，并为了解环境如何控制景观中的碳损失提供见解。这些见解将在许多方面促进社会和科学进步，从计算风力发电场需要多长时间，到偿还建设过程中消耗的碳（建设可能会影响陆地碳储存，后来反映在水产出口中），再到将河流从陆地向海洋转移碳量的严格模型纳入全球碳循环模型。随着传感器量化DOC出口的发展，将同时利用拉曼光谱对DOC组成进行表征。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展），博士培训方案还将探索开发用于现场拉曼光谱测井的现场可部署传感器。在短期内，该研究计划将进一步加深我们对NERC基础研究重点的理解，即“地球系统中碳的来源、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，这将是智力上的挑战，因此NERC培训投资的长期回报是智力灵活的个人，定位于应对未来新兴的跨学科研究挑战。事实上，这个博士培训计划发展了最近被确定为环境部门关键技能差距的15项关键技能中的6项（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、实地考察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.