Sebastian Sobek

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Inland waters, i.e. lakes, running waters and reservoirs, cover only a small fraction of the Earth’s surface, but are disproportionally active sites of carbon cycling. Inland waters receive sizeable loads of terrestrial carbon from the surrounding catchment, triggering intensive processing: the microbial degradation of organic matter leads to high carbon dioxide and methane emissions to the atmosphere, and at the same time, organic carbon burial in sediments constitutes a significant long-term carbon sink.

We combine field measurements with lab experiments, ranging from processes-scale understanding of degradation and preservation in sediments to catchment-scale and global-scale assessments of aquatic carbon fluxes. A common denominator of all projects is to understand the interactions between biogeochemical cycling in aquatic systems and environmental change.

Current projects:

• Towards a new understanding of carbon cycling in freshwaters: Methane emission hot spots and carbon burial in tropical reservoirs (ERC Starting Grant, 2014-2019, PI)
• A coupled geomorphological – biogeochemical model for process-based prediction of methane bubble emission from inland waters (Swedish Reserach Council VR, 2018-2022, PI)
• Carbon Cascades from Land to Ocean in the Anthropocene (EU Marie Curie ITN, 2015-2018, co-PI)
• Inland Water Ecosystems in the global carbon cycle – towards a mechanistic understanding (Knut och Alice Wallenberg Stiftelse, 2014-2019, co-PI)

Current group members:

• Charlotte Grasset, Post-doc: Methane production in sediments.
• Anastasija Isidorova, PhD student: Organic carbon burial in tropical reservoirs.
• Annika Linkhorst, PhD student: Methane emission from tropical reservoirs.
• Carolin Hiller, research assistant: Greenhouse gas emission.

I am also very closely involved in the work of Raquel Mendonça, Simone Cardoso, Rafael Almeida, José Paranaiba, Gabrielle Quadra and Guilherme Millen at the Aquatic Ecology Laboratory of the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil. I am also co-advsior of Jo Snöälv at the University of Exeter (UK) and Adam Hastie at the Université Libre in Brussels (BE).