Publications
A first estimate of the effect of offshore wind farms on sedimentary organic carbon stocks in the Southern North Sea
Heinatz, K., Scheffold, M. I. E., 2023, Frontiers in Marine Science.
Our study provides a first estimate of the net effect of offshore wind farms (OWFs) on organic carbon (OC) in surrounding sediments, considering the entire life cycle of OWFs (construction, operation and decommissioning phases). For this purpose, we balanced the increased OC flux to the sediment due to colonisation of new organisms at wind turbine foundations during the operation phase and the OC loss due to sediment-altering activities during construction and decommissioning. The balance showed that over the lifetime of the OWFs, about 4.6 ± 1.4 times more carbon is fixed in the sediment of the OWFs than is released.
Natural and anthropogenic influences on the development of mud depocenters in the southwestern Baltic Sea
Porz, L., Zhang, W., Schrum, C., 2022, Oceanologia.
The influence of bottom trawling on sediment resuspension in the Baltic Sea was investigated using a numerical ocean model. The results show that bottom trawling significantly increases sediment balance and transport compared to the natural state. For APOC, the model development resulting from the study is an important and necessary step to quantify the impact of bottom trawling on fluxes of particulate organic carbon in the North Sea.
Quantifying Importance of Macrobenthos for Benthic-Pelagic Coupling in a Temperate Coastal Shelf Sea
Zhang, W., Neumann, A., Daewel, U., Wirtz, K., van Beusekom, J. E. E., Eisele, A., Ma, M., Schrum, C., 2021, Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans.
Quantifying the driving mechanisms behind the distinct annual cycle of benthic oxygen fluxes in the German Bight. A novel benthic-pelagic coupled 3D model reconstructs benthic states considering the interactions between macrobenthos, bioturbation, oxygen consumption and early carbon diagenesis.