NIOZ scientist Furu Mienis awarded Veni research grant

18-10-2011   The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has awarded a Veni research grant to NIOZ scientist Furu Mienis. This grant will enable Mienis to continue her research into cold-water coral reefs.

The Veni research grant is one of the most prestigious grants for young researchers that have recently obtained their doctorate degree. Obtaining a Veni grant is considered an important step in a young researcher’s academic career. Mienis has been awarded € 250,000 for her three-year research proposal.

Cold-water coral reefs form oases of life in the deep sea. The coral structure influences the current and thus turns the reef into a kind of sediment trap, retaining particles for long periods of time. Mienis’s research project is aimed at establishing the role of cold-water coral reefs in the global carbon cycle.

Summary research proposal
Cold-water coral (CWC) ecosystems are widely distributed along the margins of the Atlantic Ocean (<2000m). The associated structures, include kilometres long and wide reefs and mounds that cover a significant surface area and form metabolic hotspots with a high potential for the storage of excess carbon in the oceans. Only three ahermatypic coral species form the ecosystem engineers of these recently discovered reefs, creating numerous sub-habitats for associated species, as rich as tropical reefs. Over the last years I have studied the near-bed environmental conditions influencing CWC growth.

Results showed that CWCs thrive in areas where strong currents prevail, that enhance the particle/food supply to the corals. However, the interaction between the water flow and the coral framework is poorly understood, including processes that govern particle and organic carbon supply like (re)suspension and trapping, while these vital processes ultimately determine reef and mound growth. We assume that the coral framework acts as a trap for particles settling from the surface ocean as well as from the reef itself. However, neither the quantity nor the composition of particles captured by the framework has been defined. Consequently, I propose to investigate how different CWC structures affect flow interaction and particle entrainment, by determining the near-bed hydrodynamic conditions, boundary layer turbulence and flow structure through a unique combination of recently developed deep-sea techniques and laboratory experiments.

I also seek to define the particle flux and composition, until final burial between the framework, using advanced geochemical techniques to distinguish between fresh and aged particles. Finally I will determine the response of CWC to past periods of climate change as archived in sediment cores. Data will contribute to global carbonate and acidification models, since one effective mechanism to remove carbon from the ocean over long time scales might be the formation of reefs and mounds.