Craig Smeaton

My principal research focus is to improve our understanding of the role marine and intertidal sedimentary environments play in the global carbon cycle over different spatial and temporal scales.

Marine sediments and intertidal soils (saltmarsh, seagrass and mangroves) are capable of burying and storing globally significant quantities of carbon (sometimes referred to as Blue Carbon) away for thousands of years potentially providing a highly important climate mitigation service.

These sedimentary environments are recognised, as crucial components of the global carbon cycle, yet many unknowns remain hindering there inclusion in global climate models, national carbon accounting and greenhouse gas inventories.

To tackle this issue I bring together techniques from across the different geoscience disciplines (Geo- physics, chemistry, morphology, spatial analysis) to better understand:

The quantity of carbon held with marine and intertidal sediments.
The rate at which carbon is buried and locked away in these sedimentary environments.
The source of the carbon (terrestrial vs marine).
The natural and anthropogenic mechanisms that govern the preservation of carbon in these sedimentary
systems.

Geographically, my research is currently focused on the saltmarshes of the United Kingdom and continental shelf sediments in the North East Atlantic with particular focus on fjord sediments.