Clare, MA, Lichtschlag, A, Paradis, S et al. (1 more author) (2023) Assessing the impact of the global subsea telecommunications network on sedimentary organic carbon stocks. Nature Communications, 14. 2080. ISSN 2041-1723
Abstract
The sequestration of organic carbon in seafloor sediments plays a key role in regulating global climate; however, human activities can disturb previously-sequestered carbon stocks, potentially reducing the capacity of the ocean to store CO₂. Recent studies revealed profound seafloor impacts and sedimentary carbon loss due to fishing and shipping, yet most other human activities in the ocean have been overlooked. Here, we present an assessment of organic carbon disturbance related to the globally-extensive subsea telecommunications cable network. Up to 2.82–11.26 Mt of organic carbon worldwide has been disturbed as a result of cable burial, in water depths of up to 2000 m. While orders of magnitude lower than that disturbed by bottom fishing, it is a non-trivial amount that is absent from global budgets. Future offshore developments that disturb the seafloor should consider the safeguarding of carbon stocks, across the full spectrum of Blue Economy industries.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Institute for Applied Geosciences (IAG) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 28 Apr 2023 09:32 |
Last Modified: | 28 Apr 2023 09:32 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Nature Research |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41467-023-37854-6 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:198590 |