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Project properties |
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| Title | Busy beavers capture carbon |
| Group | Soil Biology |
| Project type | thesis |
| Credits | 36 |
| Supervisor(s) | Annegret Larsen |
| Examiner(s) | Annegret Larsen |
| Contact info | Annegret Larsen |
| Begin date | 2023/03/01 |
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| Description | Environmental scientists have proposed drawing carbon out of the air and burying it to reduce greenhouse gasses and the impact of climate change. Maybe we can take some tips from nature’s own eco-engineers – beavers – which have been sequestering carbon for thousands of years in the ponds and meadows created by their dams, before they were eradicated from most of European rivers and wetlands. This thesis will be using soil incubation of a beaver wetland soil and apply two treatments: 1. incubate soils from beaver wetlands, and 2. dry wetting soils from corresponding not-beaver affected soils. During the soil incubation, the evolution of CO2 throughout a certain period of time due to the activity of the soil microbial community will be recorded and compared under the two different conditions. This measurement will reveal the effect of beaver damming activity on the capacity of soil to stabilize and sequester carbon. The quantification of ecosystem services is not mandatory, but possible. Are beavers a nature-based-solution, or do they cause too much trouble in a heavily human-modified landscape like the Netherlands? Find it out! |
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