Reservoirs and Fluxes
Decadal Goals
- Establish open access, continuous information streams on volcanic gas emission and related activity.
- Determine the chemical forms and distribution of carbon in Earth’s deepest interior.
- Determine seafloor carbon budget and global rates of carbon input into subduction zones.
- Estimate the net direction and magnitude of tectonic carbon fluxes from the mantle and crust to the atmosphere.
- Develop a robust overarching global carbon cycle model through deep time, including the earliest Earth, and coevolution of the geosphere and biosphere.
- Produce quantitative models of global carbon cycling at various scales, and the planetary scale (mantle convection), tectonic scale (subduction zone, orogeny, rift, volcano), and reservoir scale (core, mantle, crust, hydrosphere).
Guiding Questions
How much carbon is contained in Earth?
How much carbon is emitted from active volcanoes and active tectonic areas?
How is carbon recycled between the atmosphere and Earth’s crust, mantle, and core?
What are the chemical forms of carbon in deep Earth, and how are they distributed?
What is the nature of the whole Earth carbon cycle and how has it changed over Earth’s history?
Initiatives
DECADE (Deep Earth Carbon Degassing)
DMGC (Diamonds and Mantle Geodynamics of Carbon)
Image credits. Volcanoes: Poás Volcano, Tobias Fischer; Superdeep diamonds from Brazil, Michael Walter; Degassing: Isluga Volcano, Trail By Fire.
Scientific Steering Committee
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closePatrick AllardInstitut de Physique du Globe de Paris, France
Dr. Patrick Allard is a volcanologist at the Institut de Physics du Globe de Paris, where he also serves as director of research for the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Allard’s research focuses on remote sensing, petrology, volcanic hazards, and volcanology. An expert in his field, he has published more than 150 peer-reviewed publications on these topics.
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closeSonja AulbachGoethe-Universität, Germany
Dr. Sonja Aulbach is a research associate at Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt. Her research focuses on experimental high-pressure petrology and geochemistry, including major, minor, and trace elements all the way to diamonds. She is often sought out as a keynote speaker and has spoken at the second European Mineralogical Conference in Italy, the International Conference on Craton Formation and Destruction in China, and the 18th V. M. Goldschmidt Conference in Canada. She serves as a frequent reviewer of Geology. Aulbach also is a research partner in DCO’s Diamonds and Mantle Geodynamics of Carbon initiative.
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closeElizabeth CottrellSmithsonian Institution, USA
Dr. Elizabeth Cottrell is the curator-in-charge of National Rock and Ore Collections at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution. Prior to that, she was director of the Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Program. Her research focuses on understanding the long-term evolution of the planet, from the mechanism and chemical signature of planetary core formation 4.5 billion years ago, to the surface expression of Earth’s interior today at volcanoes around the globe. Cottrell is a fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America, a panelist for the National Science Foundation, a distinguished lecturer for the National Science Foundation’s Geodynamics at Rifting and Subducting Margins (GeoPrisms) program, and a member of DCO’s Task Force 2020.
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closeMarie EdmondsUniversity of Cambridge, UK
Dr. Marie Edmonds, a reader in Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge, is responsible for overall scientific and intellectual oversight of DCO's synthesis and integration activities. She is a mid-career researcher who has built a successful group focused on understanding volatile cycling in the solid Earth. She has a number of leadership roles within the Natural Environment Research Council (the United Kingdom’s primary funding agency) and the Geological Society of London. In addition to serving on DCO’s Executive Committee, Edmonds chairs DCO’s Synthesis Group 2019 and has served as co-chair of the Reservoirs and Fluxes community since November 2014.
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closeTobias FischerUniversity of New Mexico, USA
Dr. Tobias Fischer is a professor of volcanology and director of the Fluids and Volatiles Laboratory at the University of New Mexico. He also chairs the Board of Directors of DCO’s Carbon Observatory Deep Carbon Degassing (DCO-DECADE) international initiative that brings together scientists from about 11 countries to better understand degassing of carbon from active volcanoes and volcanic regions. His research focuses on volcanology with emphasis on active volcanism. He currently conducts research at volcanoes in Central America, the Aleutians, the East African Rift, and Antarctica. Fischer also serves on DCO’s Engagement Advisory Committee.
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closeEvelyn FüriCentre de Recherches Pétrographiques et Géochimiques, France
Dr. Evelyn Füri is a research fellow at the Centre de Recherches Pétrographiques et Géochimiques, which is part of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Her research interests include cosmochemistry and isotope geochemistry of volatile elements, analysis of rare gases in cometary matter, and analysis of volatiles in lunar samples (Apollo, Luna 24) and in particles of the Itokawa asteroid (Hayabusa). She also is a member of the European Space Agency’s Prospect User Group for the Russian Luna-27 mission.
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closeFabrice GaillardInstitut des Sciences de la Terra d'Orleans, France
Dr. Fabrice Gaillard is a planetary scientist at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique’s Orleans Campus. Gaillard is an experimentalist, specializing in high-pressure high-temperature methods, with consolidated background in chemical thermodynamics. His research activities include volatile species and magmatic systems on Earth and elsewhere.
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closeMarc HirschmannUniversity of Minnesota, USA
Dr. Marc Hirschmann is the George and Orpha Gibson chair of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of Minnesota, where he is also a professor of geology and geophysics. He uses high-pressure experimentation, together with analytical and theoretical tools, to improve understanding of melting, mass transfer, and differentiation in planetary interiors. He is taking advantage of new devices and instrumentation that are allowing measurements that were previously intractable. Hirschmann is a fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America.
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closeHans KepplerUniversity of Bayreuth, Germany
Dr. Hans Keppler is a professor and director of the Bayerisches Geoinstitut at the University of Bayeuth. Keppler’s research interests include liquids and silicate melts, the internal water cycle of Earth, trace elements in magmatic hydrothermal systems, and volcanic eruptions and transport processes in subduction zones. Keppler is a fellow of the Geochemical Society, the European Association of Geochemistry, and the American Geophysical Union (AGU), and the Mineralogical Society of America, and a member of the German National Academy of Sciences and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. He was presented the Bowen Award by AGU. Keppler is on the editorial board of Elements and Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology.
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closeKerstin LehnertColumbia University, USA
Dr. Kerstin Lehnert is the Doherty Senior Research Scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. Lehnert’s fields of interest are geoinformatics, scientific data management, igneous petrology, and geochemistry. She is actively involved in a number of projects that strive to make data accessible including EarthChem, Geoinformatics for Geochemistry, and Interdisciplinary Earth Data Alliance. The Geochemical Society recognized her work with a Distinguished Service Award.
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closeBernard MartyCentre de Recherches Petrographiques et Geochimiques, France
Dr. Bernard Marty is a professor at the Université de Lorraine where he teaches geochemistry, geochronology, and cosmochemistry. He has published 200 peer-reviewed articles on his research, which spans the origin of isotopic variations in the solar system, geochemistry of volatile elements, early Earth geodynamics and environments, mantle geodynamics, and fluid circulations in the crust. Marty is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the European Association of Geochemistry, the Geochemical Society, and the Meteoritical Society. He is a recipient of the Dolomieu Grand Prix from the French Academy of Sciences.
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closeGraham PearsonUniversity of Alberta, Canada
Dr. Graham Pearson is a mantle geochemist whose research interests focus on the origin and evolution of the continental lithospheric mantle and its diamond cargo. His current region of interest is Arctic Canada and its diamond-bearing roots. Pearson is a professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at the University of Alberta. In hopes of sharing diamond knowledge,he helped organize DCO’s third International Diamond School and is an active member of the Reservoir and Fluxes’ Diamonds and Mantle Geodynamics of Carbon Consortium.
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closeSteven ShireyCarnegie Institution for Science, USA
Dr. Steven Shirey is a senior staff scientist of the Carnegie Institution for Science where he is a member of the four-person Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry Group of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. Independently and with his mentoring of PhD students, and postdoctoral fellows, Dr. Shirey researches geological processes pertaining to the igneous evolution of the solid Earth. The formation of diamonds has been an area of interest and research for Dr. Shirey for nearly two decades. He is noted for the study of mineral inclusions in diamonds which has been applied to global scale questions such as the age of diamond-forming events, the creation of the continents, the onset of plate tectonics, and the recycling of surface materials into the deeper parts of the mantle. Dr. Shirey is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the Geological Society of America, the Geochemical Society, and the Mineralogical Society of America where he served as its president. In addition to his work on lithospheric and superdeep diamonds, he has published widely on topics as diverse as arc volcanism, Archean crustal evolution, continental volcanism, meteorites and impacts, mantle heterogeneity, and isotope geochemistry method development. As of the end of 2018, his publications had earned a Google Scholar H-index of 60 with more than 13,000 citations.
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