Predicting the standing stock of organic carbon in surface sediments of the North-West European continental shelf.

ABSTRACT: Shelf seas and their associated benthic habitats represent key systems in the global carbon cycle. However, the quantification of the related stocks and flows of carbon are often poorly constrained. To address benthic carbon storage in the North-West European continental shelf, we have spatially predicted the mass of particulate organic carbon (POC) stored in the top 10 cm of shelf sediments in parts of the North Sea, English Channel and Celtic Sea using a Random Forest model, POC measurements on surface sediments from those seas and relevant predictor variables. The presented model explains 78% of the variance in the data and we estimate that approximately 250 Mt of POC are stored in surficial sediments of the study area (633,000 km2). Upscaling to the North-West European continental shel

SUBMITTER: Diesing M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6961524 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature