Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-06-18

New Directions Linking Ocean Geochemistry, Biomineralization and Palaeoclimate

Objective

This proposal bridges three fields, geochemical oceanography, biomineralization and palaeoclimatology. The link that will be advanced is the oceanic carbon system now and in the past and its relationship to climate change. The major focus will go into marine calcification, the building block of the skeletons and shells for a large number of marine organisms. This is a key research area because: (i) storage of carbon in oceanic deposits of calcium carbonate plays an important but poorly understood role in controlling atmospheric CO2; (ii) trace element and isotopic compositions of marine calcifying organisms have been used for reconstructing environmental parameters to understand past changes in climate; (iii) increasing ocean acidification will lead to reduced calcification of modern ecosystems as well as enhanced dissolution of carbonate sediments that will play an increasingly important role in the future chemistry of the ocean and its ability to take up atmospheric CO2.

Work on biomineralization and biomineralogy of marine calcifiers is expanding rapidly but is almost completely divorced from work on their use in palaeoceanography. Bringing these two aspects together has enormous potential and is a key goal of this proposal.

There are a large number of opportunities given recent breakthroughs in understanding, within this proposal and in the future. The most important are to (i) understand incorporation of proxies into foraminifera; (ii) produce accurate estimates of pH and CO2 over earth history on tectonic, orbital and rapid time scales; (iii) explain how changes in deep-sea storage of calcium carbonate affects atmospheric CO2; and (iv) develop research on evolution of ocean chemistry concurrent with biotic innovations.

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.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Topic(s)

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.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

ERC-2010-AdG_20100224
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

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.

ERC-AG - ERC Advanced Grant

Host institution

THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
EU contribution
€ 2 581 642,81
Address
TRINITY LANE THE OLD SCHOOLS
CB2 1TN CAMBRIDGE
United Kingdom

See on map

Region
East of England East Anglia Cambridgeshire CC
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data

Beneficiaries (1)

My booklet 0 0