Nicholas Kamenos

Research Interests: climate change, biogeochemistry, global change biology, blue carbon, multiple stressors, ecosystem service provision, coralline algae, corals, ocean acidification, palaeoclimate reconstruction

The oceans are a critical global resource which is changing. Change is both natural but also, in recent times, has become anthropogenically driven. My group's research asks questions about how the oceans are altered by the synergy between natural and anthropogenic change while better determining the actual extent of global change. Global biogeochemical cycles, biodiversity, energy cascades and climate control are all resources / services that oceans provide which my group's research considers in two research groupings:

1) We investigate relationships between global change (e.g. climate variability, ocean acidification & multiple stressors) and calcifying marine ecosystems (e.g. coralline algae and corals) with particular focus on the services they provide such as their role in biogeochemical cycling and carbon storage.

2) We develop climatic and ecological proxies for the Holocene with particular focus on high latitudes (e.g. freshwater runoff in the Arctic).

Both research groupings are strongly multidisciplinary including biological, geological and chemical approaches.

We counduct our research in polar, temperate and tropical areas using SCUBA as well as in the Marine Mesocosm Facility. The Marine Mesocosm Facility has 128 remotely monitored mesocosms for exploring the impacts of CO2-associated global change on marine biotic and geochemical systems. In particular, we can investigate the resopnses of marine systems to mulitple stressors (any combination of temperature, ocean acidification, hypoxia, light and salinity) and calibarate / validate palaeoenvironmental proxies.