Photo: Marina Sanz defending her doctoral thesis (Author: Iris Hendriks)

Esporles, March 9, 2018. Marina Sanz Martín has defended her doctoral thesis supervised by the doctors Carlos M. Duarte from KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) and Paul F. Wassmann from the Arctic University of Norway (UIT). The event took place on March 9, 2018 at the University of Barcelona.

Since pelagic and benthic ecosystems contribute largely to the primary productivity of the Arctic Ocean, the experimental effect of increased CO₂ during episodes of CO₂ limitation has been researched in her thesis along with the effect of long day length, characteristic of Arctic summers, due to the likely migration of subarctic marine vegetation into an ice-free Arctic.

These effects have been evaluated on planktonic communities and benthic macrophytes in subarctic and Arctic ecosystems.

In parallel, the relationships between planktonic primary production rates estimated with three different methods (the O₂ mass balance, the ¹⁸O method and the ¹⁴C method) have been addressed for the first time in the Arctic Ocean.

Foto: Marina Sanz (2ª empezando por izq.) con los miembros del tribunal: Fran Gordillo de la Universidad de Málaga, Celia Marrasé del ICM-CSIC y Angela Wulff, Catedrática de la Universidad de Gotemburgo (de izq.-dcha.) (Autora: Iris Hendriks)

Source: IMEDEA (UIB-CSIC)