SEQUESTER 2019-2024

  • Snow on hills beside Lough Feeagh (picture credit: Mikkel Rene Andersen)

  • Coring at Feeagh (picture credit Dr Elvira de Eyto)

  • Sediment core sections (1m) from L. Feeagh

Funding: HEA Technological University Transformation Fund through the DkIT Research Office

PhD student: Ryan Smazal (view profile)

Supervisors: Prof. Eleanor Jennings (DkIT: view profile) and Dr Catherine Dalton (Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick: view profile)

The carbon cycle includes a series of processes that result in both the export and storage of carbon in ecosystems. Understanding the processes that lead to carbon sequestration and long-term storage in, for example, soils and sediments is now critical due to the impacts of increased carbon emissions on the global climate. Sequestration in lake sediments is one process that removes carbon from the global cycle over long time spans i.e. hundreds to thousands of years, and is suggested to represent a major global carbon sink. Despite this, research on the topic has been lacking until recently.  

Organic carbon from the surrounding environment is brought into lakes through the catchment hydrological network, including rivers and streams, and then deposited into the lake. In peatland catchments, which are found throughout in western Ireland and in Co. Mayo, this carbon is often in the form of particulate organic matter from peat. In order to understand the quantity and sources of organic carbon that have accumulated in lake sediments over time, a sediment core was taken from Lough Feeagh in the Burrishoole catchment, Co. Mayo, during the Marine Instiute funded BEYOND 2020 project in 2017. The core spans 8m in length. 

Using this core, the SEQUESTER (SEdiment Quantities – UndErstanding Sediment Temporal Environment Records) project now seeks to provide a palaeoenvironmental context for environmental changes and carbon storage in the Burrishoole catchment. It is being analysed for chronological, biological and geochemical proxies. Initial radiocarbon dating results have suggested that the core is at least 10,000 years old. This project will provide an opportunity to reconstruct the past environment at Lough Feeagh and to further the understanding of the processes of carbon sequestration over time. The PhD study is funded through the HEA Technological University Transformation Fund through the DkIT Research Office, with additional support for analyses of the core coming from the Marine Instiute and from the National Parks and Wildlife Service.

Additional Links:

https://www.dkit.ie/beyond-2020

https://www.marine.ie/Home/home

https://youtu.be/I3BNUWhWrKk  (video of the core extraction)