Fabian Lange
PhD Student
MPI for Marine Microbiology
Celsiusstr. 1
D-28359 Bremen
Germany
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3129 |
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Research Interests
On continental shelves 20 % of the global pelagic primary production takes place fixing a great portion of carbon as organic matter that can potentially sink towards the seafloor. The seafloor on shelves is covered by 50 – 70 % of permeable sandy sediments. Attached to the surface of the sand grains microbial communities carry out high denitrification and turnover rates. These rates are fueled by constant replenishment of electron acceptors and substrate that is transported into the sediment by advective porewater flow.
Advective porewater flow is ruled by parameters such as bottom current velocities, bedform migration and permeability. Extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) produced by microorganisms affect stability of bedforms and flow paths in porous medium, which makes them important factors for advective porewater flow in sandy sediments. However, until now the origin of EPS in the sediment and the effect of EPS on sands under in situ conditions are not known.
During my PhD I am contributing to this topic by gaining a mechanistical understanding of the origin of EPS and how it affects sediment properties. The result are going to be expressed as a numerical model to improve our understanding of organic carbon flow on continental shelves.