'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，揭示从陆地景观向水环境输出碳的信息。目前，这种理解通常是从抓取样本中构建的，缺乏细节。根据采样频率的不同，碳出口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，并提供对环境如何控制景观中碳损失的洞察。这些见解将在许多方面带来社会和科学进步，从计算一个风电场需要多长时间到偿还建设中的碳支出(建设可能会影响碳的陆地储存，后来反映在水产出口中)，到将河流将多少碳从陆地转移到海洋的严格模型纳入全球碳循环模型。随着用于量化DOC出口的传感器的开发，将通过应用拉曼光谱来同时表征DOC的组成。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步)，博士培训方案还将探索开发现场可部署传感器，用于记录现场拉曼光谱。在短期时间尺度上，拟议的研究计划将进一步加深我们对国家环境研究中心的几个基本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？”，“碳循环是如何受到其他主要生物地球化学循环的影响和整合的？”，因此适合于国家环境研究中心的关键战略和科学优先事项。然而，由于研究方案将需要跨学科(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，从长期来看，这种NERC培训投资的回报是智力灵活的个人，能够应对未来新出现的跨学科研究挑战。事实上，这一博士培训方案开发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报告号，环境部门最需要的技能)，即(时间序列的)建模、数据管理、计算、多学科、实地工作和淡水科学方面的专门知识。

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.