Project description
Exploring oceanic plateaus and their impact on global climate
Oceanic plateaus are vast underwater volcanic features that have significantly impacted the global environment, particularly through climate warming and ocean anoxia. While their volcanic activity caused major climatic disruptions around 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous, the effects of oceanic plateaus before that time remain poorly understood. With this in mind, the ERC-funded SEA-VOLC project will integrate inorganic and organic geochemistry to create global-scale maps of trace-metal nutrient disruptions and biological productivity during the Cretaceous and Triassic periods of plateau activity. Additionally, SEA-VOLC will investigate whether even earlier (as yet unknown) oceanic plateaus also impacted Earth’s environment. Understanding when and how these processes occurred is essential for assessing the distinct effects of undersea volcanism compared to continental eruptions.
Objective
Oceanic plateaus are amongst the largest geological phenomena on Earth, and their undersea volcanic formation had profound environmental effects, such as climate warming and ocean anoxia. Whilst huge progress has been made to link their land-based counterparts, continental flood basalt provinces, with climate change and mass extinctions, oceanic plateaus have been comparatively understudied due to their limited accessibility and relatively benign ecological impact. Yet, plateau volcanism triggered severe climatic and environmental disruption, but the precise mechanism(s) by which they influenced the Earth’s surface are unclear. Further, most known oceanic plateaus formed in the Cretaceous, with their likely existence and environmental impact earlier in Earth’s history seldom considered.
The SEA-VOLC Project utilizes my expertise in studying past environmental crises and geochemically fingerprinting large-scale volcanism to reconstruct the mechanism(s) by which oceanic plateaus triggered global change, and for the first time, investigate the history and impact of older plateaus that no longer exist. Combining inorganic and organic geochemistry, I will create global maps of trace-metal nutrient disruption and biological productivity during times of Cretaceous and Triassic plateau activity. Resolving the relative environmental impact of this process vs CO2 output and warming is critical to understand whether continental and oceanic volcanism influenced the Earth system differently, and why the former was often more lethal. State-of-the-art geochemical proxies that have recorded Cretaceous episodes of undersea volcanism will be applied to Silurian–Devonian sedimentary archives of Cretaceous-like anoxic events, showing whether earlier environmental crises were also linked to plateau formation for the first time. Exploring this possibility provides a unique new perspective how the Earth’s interior and its interactions with surface environments have evolved over time.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-STG
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1081 HV Amsterdam
Netherlands
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