Marine biological (‘blue’) carbon pathways are crucial components of the global carbon budget due to the ecosystem services they provide through the fixation of CO2 from the atmosphere. CO2 is removed from biosphere through long-term sequestration into seafloor sediments, removing it from the carbon cycle. Coincident with marine ice loss, little studied negative (mitigating) feedbacks to climate change are emerging in polar waters, which is important to quantify and comprehend. Understanding the mechanisms driving these pathways, that could lead to change, is a massive task and to ensure studies are comparable requires standardisation and prioritisation of future research. The expertise of scientists within the EU grant, Coastal ecosystem carbon balance in times of rapid glacier melt (CoastCarb), identified the 23 most important high latitude pathways through a modified Delphi scoring system. Metrics were selected as priorities for future research and for syntheses across broader geographic regions. The metrics with the highest importance scores also scored as the metrics that could be most readily standardised in the next five years. This review provides a definition and description of how each metric is measured, including its central role to blue carbon pathways. It also provides recommendations for standardisation, emphasising the requirement for modelling studies to scale from geographically limited regions where high-resolution data is available. Where methods cannot be standardised, cross calibration between methods is required to ensure reproducibility. An increasing use of remote sensing and innovative technologies will be necessary to scale measurements across this vast and remote region.
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Through chemical analysis of ancient animal bone found at the archaeological site of Sagalassos, and through comparison of the analytical data with that from modern bone and feed from the same location, conclusions on the ancient livestock are made. Samples of ancient and modern goat bone as well as Quercus coccifera were analyzed using Inductively Coupled Plasma–Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS). After evaluation of the consistency of the chemical characteristics of different types of modern bone in one individual, it is decided to use the trace element data of long bone for statistical treatment. After evaluation of the degree and effects of diagenesis in the fossil bone, it is concluded that trace element data are useful indicators for anthropogenic palaeoenvironmental pollution, as a distinction could be made between elements that occur naturally in the bedrock and those that can be linked to industrial pollution. The occurrence or depletion of the latter elements in fossil bone, show diachronic changes in the chemical composition of the goat bones which can be explained in function of the changing catchment area from which the animals were obtained through time. It is conceivable that during periods of insecurity, such as the fifth to sixth century A.D. in the area of Sagalassos, animal herds were kept closer to the ancient town and would hence take up more pollutants with the ingested food. A lower uptake of pollutants during the fourth century, a rich and secure period in the history of the city, can be explained by a wider catchment area from which the goats were obtained.
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