The Pelagic Ocean Living Lab 2 focuses on advancing our capacity to understand and model the role of zooplankton in ocean carbon sequestration.

Our key objectives in the Pelagic Ocean Living Lab 2 are to:

• Investigate and rank the importance of different plankton-related processes for carbon sequestration,

• Assess their potential changes in the future ocean and develop indicators (e.g., shifts in functional groups) that could predict upcoming changes in these processes.

• Gain a mechanistic understanding of the biological processes underlying carbon sequestration that will allow for extrapolation of the results to undersampled geographic areas and / or seasons.

   

The Living Lab will demonstrate moving towards more operational workflows for zooplankton observations and modelling by oroviding better representation of a key biological process (carbon sequestration through biological pump) for Earth System Models (ESMs), better understanding of the links between multiple stressors, (functional) biodiversity and biogeochemistry, and developing phytoplankton and zooplankton functional groups as potential indicators for abrupt changes (ecosystem tipping point).

The Pelagic Ocean Living Lab 2 is collaborating closely with the Pelagic Ocean Living Lab 1 and the Marine Organic Carbon Atlas Living Lab. 

Main EOVs studied in the Living Lab:

(Click on the EOV name to access the corresponding GOOS EOV Specification Sheet if available)

 Zooplankton biomass and diversity