Publications by authors named "Emil de Borger"
Article Synopsis
- Marine sediments are significant carbon stores, but bottom trawl fisheries disturb seabed habitats, potentially impacting the ocean's carbon dioxide sink.
- Research is concerned that trawling may turn these sediments into a significant source of CO, but there's a lot of uncertainty due to limited understanding of how trawling affects sediment mixing and carbon processes.
- A review protocol will investigate the effects of mobile bottom fishing on carbon processing and storage in sediments by addressing various questions about carbon types, fluxes between benthic and pelagic systems, and the biological and physical controls on this carbon.
Ecosystem functions are driven by abiotic and biotic factors, but due to high collinearity of both, it is often difficult to disentangle the drivers of these ecosystem functions. We studied sedimentological and faunal controls of benthic organic matter mineralization, a crucial ecosystem process provided for by sediments of shelf seas. Subtidal benthic habitats representative of the wide permeability gradient found in the Belgian Part of the North Sea (Northeast Atlantic Shelf) were characterized in terms of sediment descriptors, macrofauna, and sediment biogeochemistry was estimated.
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