New paper: Review article on Aquatic Eddy Covariance

Aquatic eddy covariance (AEC) has become one of the core methods used within LUMEN to understand how seafloor ecosystems produce and consume oxygen and cycle carbon.

In a review published in the Annual Review of Marine Science, Peter Berg, Markus Huettel, Ronnie N. Glud, Clare E. Reimers and Karl Attard brought together the development of the method and the major ecological and biogeochemical insights emerging from its application across aquatic environments.

AEC measures the turbulent transport of oxygen immediately above the seabed, allowing ecosystem metabolism to be quantified non-invasively, at high temporal resolution and over tens of square metres of seafloor. This makes it particularly powerful in habitats such as permeable sediments, seagrass meadows, coral reefs and seaweed canopies, where conventional enclosure methods can alter the environment being measured.

One of the clearest conclusions from more than two decades of AEC research is that seafloor oxygen exchange is far more dynamic than previously recognised. Light, currents, waves, animal activity and changes in water chemistry can alter fluxes over timescales from minutes to seasons, making continuous measurements particularly important for understanding ecosystem functioning.

AEC has since continued to expand into new environments and applications—from Arctic seafloors and kelp forests to deep-sea habitats—and remains a major focus of our methodological work.

Reference

Berg P, Huettel M, Glud RN, Reimers CE, Attard KM (2022). Aquatic Eddy Covariance: The Method and Its Contributions to Defining Oxygen and Carbon Fluxes in Marine Environments. Annual Review of Marine Science 14: 431–455. doi: 10.1146/annurev-marine-042121-012329. Article