Lake sediments provide natural sinks in which organic carbon can accumulate on timescales of thousands of years. This way a part of the carbon is permanently removed from active recycling, and lake sediments represent important nature-based solutions for carbon drawdown and climate change mitigation. To make better use of natural carbon sinks, however, it is important to understand the factors that control their formation. The BlueLakes project will deliver new data, understanding, and a digital model that will enable the water management sector and regulatory bodies to assess carbon burial in boreal lakes and understand the impacts that management decisions and climate change can have on the size of the sink. The development of the open access model will be done in co-creation with end-users, to ensure that the model will respond to their needs, hence enabling the direct uptake and impact of the project.
The consortium project is done in close collaboration with the University of Helsinki and the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK). In the project, Syke contributes especially to WP 3 on simulating carbon burial and C sink potential at catchment scale, including development and optimisation of WSFS-Vemala model, and development of Earth Observation helophyte method.
More information
Group manager Marko Järvinen, Finnish Environment Institute (Syke), firstname.lastname@syke.fi
Senior research scientist Marie Korppoo, Finnish Environment Institute (Syke), firstname.lastname@syke.fi