Project acronym CC-TOP
Project Cryosphere-Carbon on Top of the Earth (CC-Top):Decreasing Uncertainties of Thawing Permafrost and Collapsing Methane Hydrates in the Arctic
Researcher (PI) Örjan GUSTAFSSON
Host Institution (HI) STOCKHOLMS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), PE10, ERC-2015-AdG
Summary The enormous quantities of frozen carbon in the Arctic, held in shallow soils and sediments, act as “capacitors” of the global carbon system. Thawing permafrost (PF) and collapsing methane hydrates are top candidates to cause a net transfer of carbon from land/ocean to the atmosphere this century, yet uncertainties abound.
Our program targets the East Siberian Arctic Ocean (ESAO), the World’s largest shelf sea, as it holds 80% of coastal PF, 80% of subsea PF and 75% of shallow hydrates. Our initial findings (e.g., Science, 2010; Nature, 2012; PNAS; 2013; Nature Geoscience, 2013, 2014) are challenging earlier notions by showing complexities in terrestrial PF-Carbon remobilization and extensive venting of methane from subsea PF/hydrates. The objective of the CC-Top Program is to transform descriptive and data-lean pictures into quantitative understanding of the CC system, to pin down the present and predict future releases from these “Sleeping Giants” of the global carbon system.
The CC-Top program combines unique Arctic field capacities with powerful molecular-isotopic characterization of PF-carbon/methane to break through on:
The “awakening” of terrestrial PF-C pools: CC-Top will employ great pan-arctic rivers as natural integrators and by probing the δ13C/Δ14C and molecular fingerprints, apportion release fluxes of different PF-C pools.
The ESAO subsea cryosphere/methane: CC-Top will use recent spatially-extensive observations, deep sediment cores and gap-filling expeditions to (i) estimate distribution of subsea PF and hydrates; (ii) establish thermal state (thawing rate) of subsea PF-C; (iii) apportion sources of releasing methane btw subsea-PF, shallow hydrates vs seepage from the deep petroleum megapool using source-diagnostic triple-isotope fingerprinting.
Arctic Ocean slope hydrates: CC-Top will investigate sites (discovered by us 2008-2014) of collapsed hydrates venting methane, to characterize geospatial distribution and causes of destabilization.
Summary
The enormous quantities of frozen carbon in the Arctic, held in shallow soils and sediments, act as “capacitors” of the global carbon system. Thawing permafrost (PF) and collapsing methane hydrates are top candidates to cause a net transfer of carbon from land/ocean to the atmosphere this century, yet uncertainties abound.
Our program targets the East Siberian Arctic Ocean (ESAO), the World’s largest shelf sea, as it holds 80% of coastal PF, 80% of subsea PF and 75% of shallow hydrates. Our initial findings (e.g., Science, 2010; Nature, 2012; PNAS; 2013; Nature Geoscience, 2013, 2014) are challenging earlier notions by showing complexities in terrestrial PF-Carbon remobilization and extensive venting of methane from subsea PF/hydrates. The objective of the CC-Top Program is to transform descriptive and data-lean pictures into quantitative understanding of the CC system, to pin down the present and predict future releases from these “Sleeping Giants” of the global carbon system.
The CC-Top program combines unique Arctic field capacities with powerful molecular-isotopic characterization of PF-carbon/methane to break through on:
The “awakening” of terrestrial PF-C pools: CC-Top will employ great pan-arctic rivers as natural integrators and by probing the δ13C/Δ14C and molecular fingerprints, apportion release fluxes of different PF-C pools.
The ESAO subsea cryosphere/methane: CC-Top will use recent spatially-extensive observations, deep sediment cores and gap-filling expeditions to (i) estimate distribution of subsea PF and hydrates; (ii) establish thermal state (thawing rate) of subsea PF-C; (iii) apportion sources of releasing methane btw subsea-PF, shallow hydrates vs seepage from the deep petroleum megapool using source-diagnostic triple-isotope fingerprinting.
Arctic Ocean slope hydrates: CC-Top will investigate sites (discovered by us 2008-2014) of collapsed hydrates venting methane, to characterize geospatial distribution and causes of destabilization.
Max ERC Funding
2 499 756 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-11-01, End date: 2021-10-31
Project acronym CHILDMOVE
Project The impact of flight experiences on the psychological wellbeing of unaccompanied refugee minors
Researcher (PI) Ilse DERLUYN
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT GENT
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH3, ERC-2016-STG
Summary Since early 2015, the media continuously confront us with images of refugee children drowning in the Mediterranean, surviving in appalling conditions in camps or walking across Europe. Within this group of fleeing children, a considerable number is travelling without parents, the unaccompanied refugee minors.
While the media images testify to these flight experiences and their possible huge impact on unaccompanied minors’ wellbeing, there has been no systematic research to fully capture these experiences, nor their mental health impact. Equally, no evidence exists on whether the emotional impact of these flight experiences should be differentiated from the impact of the traumatic events these minors endured in their home country or from the daily stressors in the country of settlement.
This project aims to fundamentally increase our knowledge of the impact of experiences during the flight in relation to past trauma and current stressors. To achieve this aim, it is essential to set up a longitudinal follow-up of a large group of unaccompanied refugee minors, whereby our study starts from different transit countries, crosses several European countries, and uses innovative methodological and mixed-methods approaches. I will hereby not only document the psychological impact these flight experiences may have, but also the way in which care and reception structures for unaccompanied minors in both transit and settlement countries can contribute to reducing this mental health impact.
This proposal will fundamentally change the field of migration studies, by introducing a whole new area of study and novel methodological approaches to study these themes. Moreover, other fields, such as trauma studies, will be directly informed by the project, as also clinical, educational and social work interventions for victims of multiple trauma. Last, the findings on the impact of reception and care structures will be highly informative for policy makers and practitioners.
Summary
Since early 2015, the media continuously confront us with images of refugee children drowning in the Mediterranean, surviving in appalling conditions in camps or walking across Europe. Within this group of fleeing children, a considerable number is travelling without parents, the unaccompanied refugee minors.
While the media images testify to these flight experiences and their possible huge impact on unaccompanied minors’ wellbeing, there has been no systematic research to fully capture these experiences, nor their mental health impact. Equally, no evidence exists on whether the emotional impact of these flight experiences should be differentiated from the impact of the traumatic events these minors endured in their home country or from the daily stressors in the country of settlement.
This project aims to fundamentally increase our knowledge of the impact of experiences during the flight in relation to past trauma and current stressors. To achieve this aim, it is essential to set up a longitudinal follow-up of a large group of unaccompanied refugee minors, whereby our study starts from different transit countries, crosses several European countries, and uses innovative methodological and mixed-methods approaches. I will hereby not only document the psychological impact these flight experiences may have, but also the way in which care and reception structures for unaccompanied minors in both transit and settlement countries can contribute to reducing this mental health impact.
This proposal will fundamentally change the field of migration studies, by introducing a whole new area of study and novel methodological approaches to study these themes. Moreover, other fields, such as trauma studies, will be directly informed by the project, as also clinical, educational and social work interventions for victims of multiple trauma. Last, the findings on the impact of reception and care structures will be highly informative for policy makers and practitioners.
Max ERC Funding
1 432 500 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-02-01, End date: 2022-01-31
Project acronym CONPOL
Project Contexts, networks and participation: The social logic of political engagement
Researcher (PI) Sven Aron Oskarsson
Host Institution (HI) UPPSALA UNIVERSITET
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2015-CoG
Summary The statement that individuals’ immediate social circumstances influence how they think and act in the political sphere is a truism. However, both theoretical and empirical considerations have often prevented political scientists from incorporating this logic into analyses of political behavior. In the CONPOL project we argue that it is necessary to return to the idea that politics follows a social logic in order to push the theoretical and empirical boundaries in explaining political behavior. That is, people do not act as isolated individuals when confronting complex political tasks such as deciding whether to vote and which party or candidate to vote for. Instead politics should be seen as a social experience in which individuals arrive at their decisions within particular social settings: the family, the peer group, the workplace, the neighborhood. In what way do parents and other family members influence an individual’s political choices? What is the role of workmates and neighbors when individuals arrive at political decisions? Do friends and friends’ friends affect how you think and act in the political sphere? To answer such questions the standard approach to gather empirical evidence on political behavior based on national sample surveys needs to be complemented by the use of population wide register data. The empirical core of the CONPOL project is unique Swedish register data. Via the population registers provided by Statistics Sweden it is possible to identify several relevant social settings such as parent-child relations and the location of individuals within workplaces and neighborhoods. The registers also allow us to identify certain network links between individuals. Furthermore, Statistics Sweden holds information on several variables measuring important political traits. A major aim for CONPOL is to complement this information by scanning in and digitalizing election rolls with individual-level information on turnout across several elections.
Summary
The statement that individuals’ immediate social circumstances influence how they think and act in the political sphere is a truism. However, both theoretical and empirical considerations have often prevented political scientists from incorporating this logic into analyses of political behavior. In the CONPOL project we argue that it is necessary to return to the idea that politics follows a social logic in order to push the theoretical and empirical boundaries in explaining political behavior. That is, people do not act as isolated individuals when confronting complex political tasks such as deciding whether to vote and which party or candidate to vote for. Instead politics should be seen as a social experience in which individuals arrive at their decisions within particular social settings: the family, the peer group, the workplace, the neighborhood. In what way do parents and other family members influence an individual’s political choices? What is the role of workmates and neighbors when individuals arrive at political decisions? Do friends and friends’ friends affect how you think and act in the political sphere? To answer such questions the standard approach to gather empirical evidence on political behavior based on national sample surveys needs to be complemented by the use of population wide register data. The empirical core of the CONPOL project is unique Swedish register data. Via the population registers provided by Statistics Sweden it is possible to identify several relevant social settings such as parent-child relations and the location of individuals within workplaces and neighborhoods. The registers also allow us to identify certain network links between individuals. Furthermore, Statistics Sweden holds information on several variables measuring important political traits. A major aim for CONPOL is to complement this information by scanning in and digitalizing election rolls with individual-level information on turnout across several elections.
Max ERC Funding
1 621 940 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-09-01, End date: 2021-08-31
Project acronym DRY-2-DRY
Project Do droughts self-propagate and self-intensify?
Researcher (PI) Diego González Miralles
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT GENT
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE10, ERC-2016-STG
Summary Droughts cause agricultural loss, forest mortality and drinking water scarcity. Their predicted increase in recurrence and intensity poses serious threats to future global food security. Several historically unprecedented droughts have already occurred over the last decade in Europe, Australia and the USA. The cost of the ongoing Californian drought is estimated to be about US$3 billion. Still today, the knowledge of how droughts start and evolve remains limited, and so does the understanding of how climate change may affect them.
Positive feedbacks from land have been suggested as critical for the occurrence of recent droughts: as rainfall deficits dry out soil and vegetation, the evaporation of land water is reduced, then the local air becomes too dry to yield rainfall, which further enhances drought conditions. Importantly, this is not just a 'local' feedback, as remote regions may rely on evaporated water transported by winds from the drought-affected region. Following this rationale, droughts self-propagate and self-intensify.
However, a global capacity to observe these processes is lacking. Furthermore, climate and forecast models are immature when it comes to representing the influences of land on rainfall. Do climate models underestimate this land feedback? If so, future drought aggravation will be greater than currently expected. At the moment, this remains largely speculative, given the limited number of studies of these processes.
I propose to use novel in situ and satellite records of soil moisture, evaporation and precipitation, in combination with new mechanistic models that can map water vapour trajectories and explore multi-dimensional feedbacks. DRY-2-DRY will not only advance our fundamental knowledge of the mechanisms triggering droughts, it will also provide independent evidence of the extent to which managing land cover can help 'dampen' drought events, and enable progress towards more accurate short-term and long-term drought forecasts.
Summary
Droughts cause agricultural loss, forest mortality and drinking water scarcity. Their predicted increase in recurrence and intensity poses serious threats to future global food security. Several historically unprecedented droughts have already occurred over the last decade in Europe, Australia and the USA. The cost of the ongoing Californian drought is estimated to be about US$3 billion. Still today, the knowledge of how droughts start and evolve remains limited, and so does the understanding of how climate change may affect them.
Positive feedbacks from land have been suggested as critical for the occurrence of recent droughts: as rainfall deficits dry out soil and vegetation, the evaporation of land water is reduced, then the local air becomes too dry to yield rainfall, which further enhances drought conditions. Importantly, this is not just a 'local' feedback, as remote regions may rely on evaporated water transported by winds from the drought-affected region. Following this rationale, droughts self-propagate and self-intensify.
However, a global capacity to observe these processes is lacking. Furthermore, climate and forecast models are immature when it comes to representing the influences of land on rainfall. Do climate models underestimate this land feedback? If so, future drought aggravation will be greater than currently expected. At the moment, this remains largely speculative, given the limited number of studies of these processes.
I propose to use novel in situ and satellite records of soil moisture, evaporation and precipitation, in combination with new mechanistic models that can map water vapour trajectories and explore multi-dimensional feedbacks. DRY-2-DRY will not only advance our fundamental knowledge of the mechanisms triggering droughts, it will also provide independent evidence of the extent to which managing land cover can help 'dampen' drought events, and enable progress towards more accurate short-term and long-term drought forecasts.
Max ERC Funding
1 465 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-02-01, End date: 2022-01-31
Project acronym ECOHERB
Project Drivers and impacts of invertebrate herbivores across forest ecosystems globally.
Researcher (PI) Daniel Metcalfe
Host Institution (HI) LUNDS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), PE10, ERC-2015-CoG
Summary Forests slow global climate change by absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide but this ecosystem service is limited by soil nutrients. Herbivores potentially alter soil nutrients in a range of ways, but these have mostly only been recorded for large mammals. By comparison, the impacts of the abundant invertebrates in forests have largely been ignored and are not included in current models used to generate the climate predictions so vital for designing governmental policies
The proposed project will use a pioneering new interdisciplinary approach to provide the most complete picture yet available of the rates, underlying drivers and ultimate impacts of key nutrient inputs from invertebrate herbivores across forest ecosystems worldwide. Specifically, we will:
(1) Establish a network of herbivory monitoring stations across all major forest types, and across key environmental gradients (temperature, rainfall, ecosystem development).
(2) Perform laboratory experiments to examine the effects of herbivore excreta on soil processes under different temperature and moisture conditions.
(3) Integrate this information into a cutting-edge ecosystem model, to generate more accurate predictions of forest carbon sequestration under future climate change.
The network established will form the foundation for a unique long-term global monitoring effort which we intend to continue long after the current funding time scale. This work represents a powerful blend of several disciplines harnessing an array of cutting edge tools to provide fundamentally novel insights into an area of direct and urgent importance for the society.
Summary
Forests slow global climate change by absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide but this ecosystem service is limited by soil nutrients. Herbivores potentially alter soil nutrients in a range of ways, but these have mostly only been recorded for large mammals. By comparison, the impacts of the abundant invertebrates in forests have largely been ignored and are not included in current models used to generate the climate predictions so vital for designing governmental policies
The proposed project will use a pioneering new interdisciplinary approach to provide the most complete picture yet available of the rates, underlying drivers and ultimate impacts of key nutrient inputs from invertebrate herbivores across forest ecosystems worldwide. Specifically, we will:
(1) Establish a network of herbivory monitoring stations across all major forest types, and across key environmental gradients (temperature, rainfall, ecosystem development).
(2) Perform laboratory experiments to examine the effects of herbivore excreta on soil processes under different temperature and moisture conditions.
(3) Integrate this information into a cutting-edge ecosystem model, to generate more accurate predictions of forest carbon sequestration under future climate change.
The network established will form the foundation for a unique long-term global monitoring effort which we intend to continue long after the current funding time scale. This work represents a powerful blend of several disciplines harnessing an array of cutting edge tools to provide fundamentally novel insights into an area of direct and urgent importance for the society.
Max ERC Funding
1 750 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-03-01, End date: 2021-02-28
Project acronym ERA
Project Earth Resilience in the Anthropocene (ERA)Integrating non-linear biophysical and social determinantsof Earth-system stability for global sustainabilitythrough a novel community modelling platform
Researcher (PI) johan ROCKSTRÖM
Host Institution (HI) STOCKHOLMS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH2, ERC-2016-ADG
Summary In 2015, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement on climate recognised the deteriorating resilience of the Earth system in the Anthropocene. Maintaining Earth in the interglacial state that enabled the world’s societies to evolve over the past 12,000 years will require industrialised societies to embark on global-scale social transformations. Otherwise, there is a real risk of crossing tipping points in the Earth system triggering abrupt and irreversible changes.
A critical gap is that although nonlinear social and biophysical dynamics are recognized, we remain trapped in linear thinking. Global modelling and analyses – despite much progress – do not adequately represent nonlinear processes and abrupt changes, and social responses to sustainable development are incremental.
The goal of this project is to fill this gap, by exploring the biophysical and social determinants of the Earth’s long-term stability, building up a novel community modelling platform for analysis of nonlinearity and abrupt shifts, and informing global sustainability policy processes. The project will investigate two hypotheses: 1) Interactions, feedbacks and tipping points in the biosphere could, even in the absence of continued high emissions from fossil-fuel burning, tip Earth into a new state, committing to global warming over 2C and possibly beyond 4C; and 2) Only nonlinear societal transformations that aggregate to the global scale can assure long-term stability of the Earth and keep it in a manageable interglacial state.
The five research tasks are Task 1: analysis of nonlinear biosphere dynamics governing Earth resilience. Task 2: integrating nonlinear dynamics in World-Earth models. Task 3: exploring tipping points in social systems for large-scale transformation. Task 4: backcasting pathways for achieving the SDGs. Task 5: integrating World-Earth dynamics into online learning and virtual-reality games, e.g. Planet3 and Minecraft.
Summary
In 2015, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement on climate recognised the deteriorating resilience of the Earth system in the Anthropocene. Maintaining Earth in the interglacial state that enabled the world’s societies to evolve over the past 12,000 years will require industrialised societies to embark on global-scale social transformations. Otherwise, there is a real risk of crossing tipping points in the Earth system triggering abrupt and irreversible changes.
A critical gap is that although nonlinear social and biophysical dynamics are recognized, we remain trapped in linear thinking. Global modelling and analyses – despite much progress – do not adequately represent nonlinear processes and abrupt changes, and social responses to sustainable development are incremental.
The goal of this project is to fill this gap, by exploring the biophysical and social determinants of the Earth’s long-term stability, building up a novel community modelling platform for analysis of nonlinearity and abrupt shifts, and informing global sustainability policy processes. The project will investigate two hypotheses: 1) Interactions, feedbacks and tipping points in the biosphere could, even in the absence of continued high emissions from fossil-fuel burning, tip Earth into a new state, committing to global warming over 2C and possibly beyond 4C; and 2) Only nonlinear societal transformations that aggregate to the global scale can assure long-term stability of the Earth and keep it in a manageable interglacial state.
The five research tasks are Task 1: analysis of nonlinear biosphere dynamics governing Earth resilience. Task 2: integrating nonlinear dynamics in World-Earth models. Task 3: exploring tipping points in social systems for large-scale transformation. Task 4: backcasting pathways for achieving the SDGs. Task 5: integrating World-Earth dynamics into online learning and virtual-reality games, e.g. Planet3 and Minecraft.
Max ERC Funding
2 492 834 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-10-01, End date: 2022-09-30
Project acronym FASDEM
Project Failing and Successful Sequences of Democratization
Researcher (PI) Staffan I. LINDBERG
Host Institution (HI) GOETEBORGS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2016-COG
Summary The study of democratization lies at the center of political science and is increasingly important in economics, sociology, and history, and has become a central foreign policy objective. Yet, there is little conclusive evidence about in particular endogenous sequences of democratization critical to our ability to provide sound policy advise. FASDEM promises to revolutionize our understanding of the trajectories that fail to lead to democracy, and the pathways that are successful, by addressing two key questions: Which are the failing versus successful sequences of democratization? What are the determining causal relationships in these sequences?
Critical is the just finalized Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset including some 350 indicators, 34 component-indices, and five main indices of varieties of democracy from 1900 to the present for 173countries – about 15 million data points on democracy. FASDEM, if funded, will use this data capitalizing on a set of novel analytical approaches, tools, and adaptations of modeling from evolutionary biology developed by a research team in a related, project, that together can establish sequences between sets of hundreds of ordinal variables. Under the second objective, FASDEM will take a step further developing upon the latest statistical methodologies of establishing causal identification in observational data, and use these to test each step of such manifest sequences. FASDEM will make a radical departure from the crude and “correlational” paradigm in democratization studies to detail and explain failing and successful sequences of democratization for the first time.
Summary
The study of democratization lies at the center of political science and is increasingly important in economics, sociology, and history, and has become a central foreign policy objective. Yet, there is little conclusive evidence about in particular endogenous sequences of democratization critical to our ability to provide sound policy advise. FASDEM promises to revolutionize our understanding of the trajectories that fail to lead to democracy, and the pathways that are successful, by addressing two key questions: Which are the failing versus successful sequences of democratization? What are the determining causal relationships in these sequences?
Critical is the just finalized Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset including some 350 indicators, 34 component-indices, and five main indices of varieties of democracy from 1900 to the present for 173countries – about 15 million data points on democracy. FASDEM, if funded, will use this data capitalizing on a set of novel analytical approaches, tools, and adaptations of modeling from evolutionary biology developed by a research team in a related, project, that together can establish sequences between sets of hundreds of ordinal variables. Under the second objective, FASDEM will take a step further developing upon the latest statistical methodologies of establishing causal identification in observational data, and use these to test each step of such manifest sequences. FASDEM will make a radical departure from the crude and “correlational” paradigm in democratization studies to detail and explain failing and successful sequences of democratization for the first time.
Max ERC Funding
2 000 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-03-01, End date: 2022-02-28
Project acronym METLAKE
Project Predicting future methane fluxes from Northern lakes
Researcher (PI) DAVID TORBJORN EMANUEL BASTVIKEN
Host Institution (HI) LINKOPINGS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), PE10, ERC-2016-COG
Summary The new global temperature goal calls for reliable quantification of present and future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including climate feedbacks. Non-CO2 GHGs, with methane (CH4) being the most important, represent a large but highly uncertain component in global GHG budget. Lakes are among the largest natural sources of CH4 but our understanding of lake CH4 fluxes is rudimentary. Lake emissions are not yet routinely monitored, and coherent, spatially representative, long-term datasets are rare which hamper accurate flux estimates and predictions.
METLAKE aims to improve our ability to quantify and predict lake CH4 emissions. Major goals include: (1) the development of robust validated predictive models suitable for use at the lake rich northern latitudes where large climate changes are anticipated in the near future, (2) the testing of the idea that appropriate consideration of spatiotemporal scaling can greatly facilitate generation of accurate yet simple predictive models, (3) to reveal and quantify detailed flux regulation patterns including spatiotemporal interactions and response times to environmental change, and (4) to pioneer novel use of sensor networks and near ground remote sensing with a new hyperspectral CH4 camera suitable for large-scale high resolution CH4 measurements.
Extensive field work based on optimized state-of-the-art approaches will generate multi-scale and multi-system data, supplemented by experiments, and evaluated by data analyses and modelling approaches targeting effects of scaling on model performance.
Altogether, METLAKE will advance our understanding of one of the largest natural CH4 sources, and provide us with systematic tools to predict future lake emissions. Such quantification of feedbacks on natural GHG emissions is required to move beyond state-of-the-art regarding global GHG budgets and to estimate the mitigation efforts needed to reach global climate goals.
Summary
The new global temperature goal calls for reliable quantification of present and future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including climate feedbacks. Non-CO2 GHGs, with methane (CH4) being the most important, represent a large but highly uncertain component in global GHG budget. Lakes are among the largest natural sources of CH4 but our understanding of lake CH4 fluxes is rudimentary. Lake emissions are not yet routinely monitored, and coherent, spatially representative, long-term datasets are rare which hamper accurate flux estimates and predictions.
METLAKE aims to improve our ability to quantify and predict lake CH4 emissions. Major goals include: (1) the development of robust validated predictive models suitable for use at the lake rich northern latitudes where large climate changes are anticipated in the near future, (2) the testing of the idea that appropriate consideration of spatiotemporal scaling can greatly facilitate generation of accurate yet simple predictive models, (3) to reveal and quantify detailed flux regulation patterns including spatiotemporal interactions and response times to environmental change, and (4) to pioneer novel use of sensor networks and near ground remote sensing with a new hyperspectral CH4 camera suitable for large-scale high resolution CH4 measurements.
Extensive field work based on optimized state-of-the-art approaches will generate multi-scale and multi-system data, supplemented by experiments, and evaluated by data analyses and modelling approaches targeting effects of scaling on model performance.
Altogether, METLAKE will advance our understanding of one of the largest natural CH4 sources, and provide us with systematic tools to predict future lake emissions. Such quantification of feedbacks on natural GHG emissions is required to move beyond state-of-the-art regarding global GHG budgets and to estimate the mitigation efforts needed to reach global climate goals.
Max ERC Funding
2 000 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-04-01, End date: 2022-03-31
Project acronym MIDLAND
Project Developing middle-range theories linking land use displacement, intensification and transitions
Researcher (PI) Patrick, Michel, Francis, Ghislain Meyfroidt
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH3, ERC-2015-STG
Summary Land is a nexus for crucial societal and environmental challenges including food security, access to water, land degradation, biodiversity loss, and climate change. Development of solutions to balance these tradeoffs and synergies is currently hindered by the lack of theories explaining the conditions under which different pathways of land change occur and lead to different outcomes, integrating human and environmental aspects.
This project will develop and test integrated middle-range theories explaining the linkages between three of the major processes in land systems, i.e., (i) land use intensification and expansion, (ii) land use displacement and trade, and (iii) land use transitions or regime shifts. The work will focus on the emerging agricultural frontier of Southern African dry forests and savannas, which is a threatened and understudied region, and its linkages with distant places.
To overcome current limitations, the project builds on (i) experience in empirical, place-based studies, (ii) strong knowledge of social sciences and human-environment theories, (iii) rigorous inductive and deductive approaches to develop and test theories, and (iv) new ways to analyze linkages between distant social-ecological systems.
We will analyze: (i) The strategic field of actors’ coalitions, institutions and distant linkages in emerging frontiers; (ii) Links between land use displacement, leakage, and local land changes; (iii) Pathways of agricultural expansion and intensification in tropical landscapes; and (iv) The conditions for transformative governance of land systems to foster resilient landscapes that sustain ecosystem services and livelihoods. These results will then be integrated to move towards the next generation of land system science, which will be able to develop, test and be guided by theoretical models. This will contribute to more relevant insights for social-ecological systems broadly and for sustainability and other social and natural sciences.
Summary
Land is a nexus for crucial societal and environmental challenges including food security, access to water, land degradation, biodiversity loss, and climate change. Development of solutions to balance these tradeoffs and synergies is currently hindered by the lack of theories explaining the conditions under which different pathways of land change occur and lead to different outcomes, integrating human and environmental aspects.
This project will develop and test integrated middle-range theories explaining the linkages between three of the major processes in land systems, i.e., (i) land use intensification and expansion, (ii) land use displacement and trade, and (iii) land use transitions or regime shifts. The work will focus on the emerging agricultural frontier of Southern African dry forests and savannas, which is a threatened and understudied region, and its linkages with distant places.
To overcome current limitations, the project builds on (i) experience in empirical, place-based studies, (ii) strong knowledge of social sciences and human-environment theories, (iii) rigorous inductive and deductive approaches to develop and test theories, and (iv) new ways to analyze linkages between distant social-ecological systems.
We will analyze: (i) The strategic field of actors’ coalitions, institutions and distant linkages in emerging frontiers; (ii) Links between land use displacement, leakage, and local land changes; (iii) Pathways of agricultural expansion and intensification in tropical landscapes; and (iv) The conditions for transformative governance of land systems to foster resilient landscapes that sustain ecosystem services and livelihoods. These results will then be integrated to move towards the next generation of land system science, which will be able to develop, test and be guided by theoretical models. This will contribute to more relevant insights for social-ecological systems broadly and for sustainability and other social and natural sciences.
Max ERC Funding
1 498 420 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-05-01, End date: 2021-04-30
Project acronym MiTSoPro
Project Migration and Transnational Social Protection in (post-)crisis Europe
Researcher (PI) Jean-Michel Lafleur
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITE DE LIEGE
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2015-STG
Summary The negative employment and social developments across Europe since the start of the crisis, coupled with increased fiscal constraints and changing migration patterns, have led to increasing depictions of EU and third-country immigrants as ‘abusers’ of their social protection systems. Member States have accordingly sought reduce migrants’ ability to access social protection benefits, despite the fact that they are disproportionately at risk of poverty and social exclusion.
This project looks at the different strategies that migrants have to access social protection within (post) crisis Europe and does so by explicitly integrating social policy and migration studies’ approaches on the phenomenon. More precisely, it aims to study transnational social protection, that we define as migrants’ cross-border strategies to cope with social risks in areas such as health, long-term care, pensions or unemployment that combine entitlements to host and home state-based public welfare policies and market-, family- and community-based practices.
This study thus consists in, first, identifying the social protection policies and programs that home countries make accessible to their citizens abroad, and then compiling this information into an online database. We will then aggregate the results of the database into a Transnational Social Protection Index (TSPIx) in order to determine the overall level of engagement of each state with citizens abroad in a comparative way.
Second, on the basis of the results of the index, we will select case studies of migrants from two EU and two non-EU countries that vary in their level of engagement in providing social protection to their citizens abroad. We will then undertake multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork to qualitatively assess the informal social protection strategies used by migrants and examine their interaction with formal host and home state social protection provision.
Summary
The negative employment and social developments across Europe since the start of the crisis, coupled with increased fiscal constraints and changing migration patterns, have led to increasing depictions of EU and third-country immigrants as ‘abusers’ of their social protection systems. Member States have accordingly sought reduce migrants’ ability to access social protection benefits, despite the fact that they are disproportionately at risk of poverty and social exclusion.
This project looks at the different strategies that migrants have to access social protection within (post) crisis Europe and does so by explicitly integrating social policy and migration studies’ approaches on the phenomenon. More precisely, it aims to study transnational social protection, that we define as migrants’ cross-border strategies to cope with social risks in areas such as health, long-term care, pensions or unemployment that combine entitlements to host and home state-based public welfare policies and market-, family- and community-based practices.
This study thus consists in, first, identifying the social protection policies and programs that home countries make accessible to their citizens abroad, and then compiling this information into an online database. We will then aggregate the results of the database into a Transnational Social Protection Index (TSPIx) in order to determine the overall level of engagement of each state with citizens abroad in a comparative way.
Second, on the basis of the results of the index, we will select case studies of migrants from two EU and two non-EU countries that vary in their level of engagement in providing social protection to their citizens abroad. We will then undertake multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork to qualitatively assess the informal social protection strategies used by migrants and examine their interaction with formal host and home state social protection provision.
Max ERC Funding
1 306 718 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-11-01, End date: 2021-10-31
Project acronym MobileKids
Project Children in multi-local post-separation families
Researcher (PI) Laura Merla
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2015-STG
Summary This project focuses on the experience of two cohorts of children aged 10 and 13 at the beginning of the study and who are living in multi-local, post-separation families in Belgium, in France and in Italy, that is, families where the mother and the father are either divorced or separated, live in different households in the same country, and share the physical custody of their child(ren).
A major goal of this project is to investigate the diversity of children’s experience of multi-local family life and identify their specific needs, through children’s own accounts of their lives. This means understanding if, and under what circumstances, children appropriate their multi-local lives and develop an habitus that incorporates the capacity to maintain social relations in a multi-local context and to appropriate mobility and virtual connectedness.
The project combines three levels of analysis: the macro-level of policies, the meso-level of family environments (family resources, cultures and practices; and spatial contexts), and the micro-level of children’s lives, which consists in examining how children maintain their social and family relationships as they move with various temporalities between two households that are located in specific administrative territories and spatial entities. This means understanding how children’s interpersonal relationships and networks of significant others shape, and are re-shaped by their mobility in post-separation families; and the interconnections between geographical and virtual mobility.
The study combines four methods: a policy analysis of multilocality, secondary data analysis of relevant databases, semi-structured interviews with children’s mothers and fathers, and a qualitative, in-depth study of the lived experiences of 90 children.
Summary
This project focuses on the experience of two cohorts of children aged 10 and 13 at the beginning of the study and who are living in multi-local, post-separation families in Belgium, in France and in Italy, that is, families where the mother and the father are either divorced or separated, live in different households in the same country, and share the physical custody of their child(ren).
A major goal of this project is to investigate the diversity of children’s experience of multi-local family life and identify their specific needs, through children’s own accounts of their lives. This means understanding if, and under what circumstances, children appropriate their multi-local lives and develop an habitus that incorporates the capacity to maintain social relations in a multi-local context and to appropriate mobility and virtual connectedness.
The project combines three levels of analysis: the macro-level of policies, the meso-level of family environments (family resources, cultures and practices; and spatial contexts), and the micro-level of children’s lives, which consists in examining how children maintain their social and family relationships as they move with various temporalities between two households that are located in specific administrative territories and spatial entities. This means understanding how children’s interpersonal relationships and networks of significant others shape, and are re-shaped by their mobility in post-separation families; and the interconnections between geographical and virtual mobility.
The study combines four methods: a policy analysis of multilocality, secondary data analysis of relevant databases, semi-structured interviews with children’s mothers and fathers, and a qualitative, in-depth study of the lived experiences of 90 children.
Max ERC Funding
1 499 312 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-09-01, End date: 2021-08-31
Project acronym MUSES
Project Towards middle-range theories of the co-evolutionary dynamics of multi-level social-ecological systems
Researcher (PI) Maja Schlüter
Host Institution (HI) STOCKHOLMS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH3, ERC-2015-CoG
Summary Humans have the capacity to change the biosphere from local to global scales while at the same time fundamentally depending on a functioning biosphere for their well-being. Moreover human societies are increasingly affected by global change and adapting to it in multiple ways. These interdependencies give rise to non-linear, cross-scale dynamics that pose significant challenges for analysis and governance of social-ecological systems (SES). In view of the need for societal transformations towards sustainability is the identification of mechanisms of change in SES an urgent and cutting-edge research frontier. This project aims to develop new methodologies and middle-range theories of the dynamics of SES. It will take the nature of SES as complex adaptive systems into account by developing a mechanism-based understanding of change in SES as it arises from micro-level interactions within complex networks of actors and ecosystems. Particular emphasis will be put on emergent and top-down cross-scale interactions.
To this end we will develop dynamic multi-level models using agent-based and mathematical modeling approaches. Model development will be based on a typology of cross-scale interactions, theories from the natural and social sciences and empirical evidence from marine and terrestrial SES. We will combine stylized with empirically-based models and cross-case comparison to develop a typology of social-ecological configurations of the long-term persistence of SES and their capacity to change. Knowledge integration across disciplines and the development of integrative frameworks and approaches will be supported by procedures to bridge different ontological and epistemological foundations. The project will advance sustainability science by providing new methods for modeling multi-level SES and cross-scale interactions, and approaches to identify and include critical social-ecological interactions, particularly human adaptive responses, into models of SES.
Summary
Humans have the capacity to change the biosphere from local to global scales while at the same time fundamentally depending on a functioning biosphere for their well-being. Moreover human societies are increasingly affected by global change and adapting to it in multiple ways. These interdependencies give rise to non-linear, cross-scale dynamics that pose significant challenges for analysis and governance of social-ecological systems (SES). In view of the need for societal transformations towards sustainability is the identification of mechanisms of change in SES an urgent and cutting-edge research frontier. This project aims to develop new methodologies and middle-range theories of the dynamics of SES. It will take the nature of SES as complex adaptive systems into account by developing a mechanism-based understanding of change in SES as it arises from micro-level interactions within complex networks of actors and ecosystems. Particular emphasis will be put on emergent and top-down cross-scale interactions.
To this end we will develop dynamic multi-level models using agent-based and mathematical modeling approaches. Model development will be based on a typology of cross-scale interactions, theories from the natural and social sciences and empirical evidence from marine and terrestrial SES. We will combine stylized with empirically-based models and cross-case comparison to develop a typology of social-ecological configurations of the long-term persistence of SES and their capacity to change. Knowledge integration across disciplines and the development of integrative frameworks and approaches will be supported by procedures to bridge different ontological and epistemological foundations. The project will advance sustainability science by providing new methods for modeling multi-level SES and cross-scale interactions, and approaches to identify and include critical social-ecological interactions, particularly human adaptive responses, into models of SES.
Max ERC Funding
1 969 599 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-02-01, End date: 2022-01-31
Project acronym QUALIDEM
Project Eroding Democracies. A qualitative (re-)appraisal of how policies shape democratic linkages in Western democracies
Researcher (PI) Virginie VAN INGELGOM
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2016-STG
Summary The future consolidation or erosion of western democracies depends on the political perceptions, experiences and participation of ordinary citizens. Even when they disagree on the implications of their findings, previous studies stress that both attitudinal and behavioural forms of democratic linkages – political trust, political support, loyalty, formal and informal participation – have come under considerable pressure in recent decades. The QUALIDEM project offers a qualitative (re)appraisal of citizens’ (dis-)affection towards politics by relying on the core argument of the policy feedback literature: attitudes and behaviours are outcomes of past policy. It aims to explain the evolutions of democratic linkages as being shaped by public policy, and specifically by the turn to neoliberalism and supranationalisation. It aims to systematically analyse the domestic and socially differentiated effects of both of these major macro transformations to citizens’ representations and experiences of politics, as an addition to the existing emphasis on individual determinants and the existing contextual explanations of disengagement and disaffection towards politics. On the theoretical level, this project therefore aims to build bridges between scholars of public policy and students of mass politics. On the empirical level, QUALIDEM relies on the reanalysis of qualitative data – interviews and focus groups – from a diachronic and comparative perspective focusing on four Western European countries (Belgium, France, Germany and the UK) with the US serving as a counterpoint. It will renew the methodological approach to the question of ordinary citizens’ disengagement and disaffection by providing a detailed and empirically-grounded understanding of the mechanisms of production and change in democratic linkages. It will develop an innovative methodological infrastructure for the storage of and access to twenty years of qualitative European comparative surveys.
Summary
The future consolidation or erosion of western democracies depends on the political perceptions, experiences and participation of ordinary citizens. Even when they disagree on the implications of their findings, previous studies stress that both attitudinal and behavioural forms of democratic linkages – political trust, political support, loyalty, formal and informal participation – have come under considerable pressure in recent decades. The QUALIDEM project offers a qualitative (re)appraisal of citizens’ (dis-)affection towards politics by relying on the core argument of the policy feedback literature: attitudes and behaviours are outcomes of past policy. It aims to explain the evolutions of democratic linkages as being shaped by public policy, and specifically by the turn to neoliberalism and supranationalisation. It aims to systematically analyse the domestic and socially differentiated effects of both of these major macro transformations to citizens’ representations and experiences of politics, as an addition to the existing emphasis on individual determinants and the existing contextual explanations of disengagement and disaffection towards politics. On the theoretical level, this project therefore aims to build bridges between scholars of public policy and students of mass politics. On the empirical level, QUALIDEM relies on the reanalysis of qualitative data – interviews and focus groups – from a diachronic and comparative perspective focusing on four Western European countries (Belgium, France, Germany and the UK) with the US serving as a counterpoint. It will renew the methodological approach to the question of ordinary citizens’ disengagement and disaffection by providing a detailed and empirically-grounded understanding of the mechanisms of production and change in democratic linkages. It will develop an innovative methodological infrastructure for the storage of and access to twenty years of qualitative European comparative surveys.
Max ERC Funding
1 491 659 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-04-01, End date: 2022-03-31
Project acronym TEACHERSCAREERS
Project Cultural roots and institutional transformations of teachers’ careers and the teaching profession in Europe
Researcher (PI) Xavier Raphael DUMAY
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH3, ERC-2016-STG
Summary The teaching profession is central to a number of major issues concerning the possible futures of educational systems.
The functioning of the profession suffers from low attractiveness, fragmentation, and teacher shortages. This proposal constitutes the first systematic comparative project in Europe aimed at understanding the role of the institutional dimensions affecting teachers’ careers and the teaching profession as a whole.
It has four objectives: [1] to explain the nature of teacher policy over the last thirty years in different educational systems (Belgium, France and England); [2] to understand the changing status of the teaching profession and its impact on the diversification of the teaching workforce; [3] to analyse the processes by which teachers are allocated into increasingly diverse working and professional conditions; and [4] to model and predict teacher attrition and migration within a common but differentiated multilevel framework.
This project will adopt a post-comparative mixed-method design organized around four work packages on teacher policy, supply, labour markets and mobility. It will combine five methods: policy analysis of teachers’ recruitment and careers; secondary data analyses of relevant national and international datasets on teacher supply and the profession’s attractiveness; a qualitative, in-depth study of three national labour-market spaces; multilevel multi-group analyses of original datasets on teacher mobility, and semi-structured interviews with non-entrants and early leavers.
This project will produce new theoretical knowledge about labour markets for teachers and contribute to the reconceptualization of the nature of institutional change affecting educational systems in a society characterized by the progressive decline of nation states, increased interdependence between societal fields and the fragmentation of individual life spheres.
Summary
The teaching profession is central to a number of major issues concerning the possible futures of educational systems.
The functioning of the profession suffers from low attractiveness, fragmentation, and teacher shortages. This proposal constitutes the first systematic comparative project in Europe aimed at understanding the role of the institutional dimensions affecting teachers’ careers and the teaching profession as a whole.
It has four objectives: [1] to explain the nature of teacher policy over the last thirty years in different educational systems (Belgium, France and England); [2] to understand the changing status of the teaching profession and its impact on the diversification of the teaching workforce; [3] to analyse the processes by which teachers are allocated into increasingly diverse working and professional conditions; and [4] to model and predict teacher attrition and migration within a common but differentiated multilevel framework.
This project will adopt a post-comparative mixed-method design organized around four work packages on teacher policy, supply, labour markets and mobility. It will combine five methods: policy analysis of teachers’ recruitment and careers; secondary data analyses of relevant national and international datasets on teacher supply and the profession’s attractiveness; a qualitative, in-depth study of three national labour-market spaces; multilevel multi-group analyses of original datasets on teacher mobility, and semi-structured interviews with non-entrants and early leavers.
This project will produce new theoretical knowledge about labour markets for teachers and contribute to the reconceptualization of the nature of institutional change affecting educational systems in a society characterized by the progressive decline of nation states, increased interdependence between societal fields and the fragmentation of individual life spheres.
Max ERC Funding
1 498 125 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-09-01, End date: 2022-08-31
Project acronym ViEWS
Project The Violence Early-Warning System: Building a Scientific Foundation for Conflict Forecasting
Researcher (PI) Håvard Hegre
Host Institution (HI) UPPSALA UNIVERSITET
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH2, ERC-2015-AdG
Summary The challenges of preventing, mitigating, and adapting to large-scale political violence are daunting, particularly when violence escalates where it is not expected. Early-warning systems of sufficient quality and transparency do not exist, limiting the ability of the international community to effectively assist affected populations. We propose to develop, test, and iteratively improve a pilot Violence Early-Warning System (ViEWS) that is rigorous, data-based, and publicly available to researchers and the international community. This objective is challenging but feasible. The conflict research community has laid the ground for such a system through careful isolation of theoretically manageable sub-components of complex phenomena, and concomitant systematic, disaggregated data collection efforts. A major innovation in the project is to integrate these isolated research programs into a theoretically and methodologically consistent forecasting system, by means of dynamic simulation techniques in combination with Bayesian Model Averaging, and guided by continuous out-of-sample evaluation. This integration effort will not only allow an early-warning system of unprecedented scope and performance, but also build theoretically informative bridges between numerous compartmentalized conflict research programs. Concentrating on theoretical and methodological development, the pilot will be limited in scope to Africa but be scalable. ViEWS will provide early warnings for four forms of political violence: armed conflict involving states and rebel groups, armed conflict between non-state actors, violence against civilians, and forced population displacement, and apply these to specific actors, sub-national geographical units, and countries. Led by Håvard Hegre, the system will leverage the data resources within the Uppsala Conflict Data program, the world-leading provider of conflict data, in combination with a strong team of highly experienced conflict scholars.
Summary
The challenges of preventing, mitigating, and adapting to large-scale political violence are daunting, particularly when violence escalates where it is not expected. Early-warning systems of sufficient quality and transparency do not exist, limiting the ability of the international community to effectively assist affected populations. We propose to develop, test, and iteratively improve a pilot Violence Early-Warning System (ViEWS) that is rigorous, data-based, and publicly available to researchers and the international community. This objective is challenging but feasible. The conflict research community has laid the ground for such a system through careful isolation of theoretically manageable sub-components of complex phenomena, and concomitant systematic, disaggregated data collection efforts. A major innovation in the project is to integrate these isolated research programs into a theoretically and methodologically consistent forecasting system, by means of dynamic simulation techniques in combination with Bayesian Model Averaging, and guided by continuous out-of-sample evaluation. This integration effort will not only allow an early-warning system of unprecedented scope and performance, but also build theoretically informative bridges between numerous compartmentalized conflict research programs. Concentrating on theoretical and methodological development, the pilot will be limited in scope to Africa but be scalable. ViEWS will provide early warnings for four forms of political violence: armed conflict involving states and rebel groups, armed conflict between non-state actors, violence against civilians, and forced population displacement, and apply these to specific actors, sub-national geographical units, and countries. Led by Håvard Hegre, the system will leverage the data resources within the Uppsala Conflict Data program, the world-leading provider of conflict data, in combination with a strong team of highly experienced conflict scholars.
Max ERC Funding
2 496 972 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-01-01, End date: 2021-12-31
Project acronym WeThaw
Project Mineral Weathering in Thawing Permafrost: Causes and Consequences
Researcher (PI) Sophie OPFERGELT
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE10, ERC-2016-STG
Summary Enhanced thawing of the permafrost in response to warming of the Earth’s high latitude regions exposes previously frozen soil organic carbon (SOC) to microbial decomposition, liberating carbon to the atmosphere and creating a dangerous positive feedback on climate warming. Thawing the permafrost may also unlock a cascade of mineral weathering reactions. These will be accompanied by mineral nutrient release and generation of reactive surfaces which will influence plant growth, microbial SOC degradation and SOC stabilisation. Arguably, weathering is an important but hitherto neglected component for correctly assessing and predicting the permafrost carbon feedback. The goal of WeThaw is to provide the first comprehensive assessment of the mineral weathering response in permafrost regions subject to thawing. By addressing this crucial knowledge gap, WeThaw will significantly augment our capacity to develop models that can accurately predict the permafrost carbon feedback.
Specifically, I will provide the first estimate of the permafrost’s mineral element reservoir which is susceptible to rapidly respond to enhanced thawing, and I will assess the impact of thawing on the soil nutrient storage capacity. To determine the impact of increased mineral weathering on mineral nutrient availability in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in permafrost regions, the abiotic and biotic sources and processes controlling their uptake and release will be unraveled by combining novel geochemical techniques, involving the non-traditional silicon, magnesium and lithium stable isotopes, with soil mineral and physico-chemical characterisations. I posit that this groundbreaking approach has the potential to deliver unprecedented insights into mineral weathering dynamics in warming permafrost regions. This frontier research which crosses disciplinary boundaries is a mandatory step for being able to robustly explain the role of mineral weathering in modulating the permafrost carbon feedback.
Summary
Enhanced thawing of the permafrost in response to warming of the Earth’s high latitude regions exposes previously frozen soil organic carbon (SOC) to microbial decomposition, liberating carbon to the atmosphere and creating a dangerous positive feedback on climate warming. Thawing the permafrost may also unlock a cascade of mineral weathering reactions. These will be accompanied by mineral nutrient release and generation of reactive surfaces which will influence plant growth, microbial SOC degradation and SOC stabilisation. Arguably, weathering is an important but hitherto neglected component for correctly assessing and predicting the permafrost carbon feedback. The goal of WeThaw is to provide the first comprehensive assessment of the mineral weathering response in permafrost regions subject to thawing. By addressing this crucial knowledge gap, WeThaw will significantly augment our capacity to develop models that can accurately predict the permafrost carbon feedback.
Specifically, I will provide the first estimate of the permafrost’s mineral element reservoir which is susceptible to rapidly respond to enhanced thawing, and I will assess the impact of thawing on the soil nutrient storage capacity. To determine the impact of increased mineral weathering on mineral nutrient availability in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in permafrost regions, the abiotic and biotic sources and processes controlling their uptake and release will be unraveled by combining novel geochemical techniques, involving the non-traditional silicon, magnesium and lithium stable isotopes, with soil mineral and physico-chemical characterisations. I posit that this groundbreaking approach has the potential to deliver unprecedented insights into mineral weathering dynamics in warming permafrost regions. This frontier research which crosses disciplinary boundaries is a mandatory step for being able to robustly explain the role of mineral weathering in modulating the permafrost carbon feedback.
Max ERC Funding
1 999 985 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-09-01, End date: 2022-08-31