Professor Witold Szczuciński of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań took part in a study of the carbon cycle in nature. The research was based on sediment cores taken from the bottom of the Hornsund fjord (Spitsbergen). The results of the team of scientists were published in Nature Geoscience.

Until recently, it was thought that carbon carried by water from melting glaciers (known as petrogenic carbon) is not used by organisms and is buried with the sediments at the bottom of fjords, without significantly affecting the carbon balance in the seas and thus also in the atmosphere. 

The latest results from the German-Norwegian-Polish team of scientists indicate that microbes living in sediments at the bottom of fjords may, however, use petrogenic carbon for their own purposes, causing it to be reintroduced into the biological carbon cycle and thus increasing the pool of carbon in the seas and the atmosphere.

Read more: https://amu.edu.pl/wiadomosci/aktualnosci/komunikaty-prasowe/wegiel-z-lodowcow