Salt marsh restoration and climate feedbacks: Is carbon neutral the same thing as climate neutral?

Coastal ecosystems have been significantly degraded over the past 200 years through recovery for agricultural/industrial purposes, pollution and sea level rise. Current international efforts are being made to restore and support coastal ecosystems and protect the services that they provide. As with most human endeavors however, these actions precede full understanding of the systems involved.

Research has shown that restored salt marsh ecosystems do not return to the "natural" state, even over century timescales. The species composition of restored sites is similar to salt marshes from lower elevations, leading to some interesting environmental considerations; 1) What drives this difference, and is it chemical/physical or biological in nature? 2) How does this change in species composition affect carbon and nutrient cycling through these restored salt marshes? 3) Is there also a significant difference in the microbial community within salt marsh sediments, and how will this affect carbon, nitrogen, sulfur and halogen cycling? 4) Does the impact on carbon cycling outweigh the influence of all other processes?

Skills
During the course of the PhD they will develop skills in field and lab-based sampling, experimental design and data analysis. They will work closely with state of the art chemical (analytical IRGA, GC-ECD and GC-MS) and biological techniques (high throughput sequencing) so have the opportunity to gain extensive skills in the chemical analysis of trace gases and soils. Hence they will gain a knowledge of techniques and practices to improve our understanding of soil communities interactions with wind in such a way as to develop our current climate models to more accurately predict future climate scenarios.