Up and running at the Mountain Centre

Abstract Seagrass meadows are coastal marine ecosystems that store autochthonous and allochthonous carbon in sediments. Despite their importance as “blue carbon” ecosystems along European coastlines, seagrasses are rarely included in national climate plans, partly due to difficulties in mapping carbon stocks at scale. The MARCO-BOLO Horizon EU project aims to strengthen coastal, marine, and freshwater biodiversity observing in support of decision making. As part of this project, we examined how remote sensing can support European needs for blue carbon mapping. Here we test whether oceanographic data products, including remote-sensing-derived variables, can predict seagrass sediment organic carbon stocks. Environmental drivers of carbon storage were identified, and datasets from NASA and Copernicus were spatially matched with seagrass sediment carbon measurements from the EURO-CARBON database. A suite of machine learning models were trained to predict carbon density in seagrass sediment cores. Incorporating oceanographic data products substantially increased model performance, with the top 15 variables explaining up to 65% of the variance (R2) of measured carbon density. Carbonate chemistry, nutrient, and hydrodynamic energy variables emerged as key predictors for all models. The highest performing model, a Gaussian Process Regressor (GPR) was used to predict carbon stocks across all European seagrass beds based on known seagrass extent from the seagrass Essential Ocean Variable. Beyond the project scientific results, I will also discuss how a co-design process with stakeholders was implemented throughout the process to align the scientific approach with policy and management needs. The outcome resulted in a virtual research environment which allows users to estimate carbon stocks by providing seagrass bed coordinates and species identity. This tool addresses growing needs for scalable blue carbon mapping in Europe and demonstrates how global data products can support these efforts. Speaker information Natalya Gallo is a marine ecologist and biological oceanographer. She is a senior researcher at the Norwegian Research Centre (NORCE) in Bergen, Norway, working in the Ocean Observing Group, and is an affiliate of the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research. Her overarching interests are in how climate change impacts marine ecosystems and fisheries, the role of the ocean in climate change mitigation and adaptation (including blue carbon and mCDR), and how scientific research can support sustainable ocean management and development. Prior to coming to NORCE, she worked at the University of Bergen and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography UCSD.

Hazards Discussion Meeting Series 2026 – Your science and society What? Science talk on a paper or project, followed by an open discussion on how the presented science can reach “society”. In the open discussion we will address the target “society” audience for the paper/project, how the main outcomes can be best communicated, and who at BCCR can help. Who can attend? Open to all BCCR. When? Every second Wednesday of the month, 11–12h, in Bjerknes Meeting Room (3rd floor). 13 May Mats Venning (NORCE) Climate Services Paper 10 June Victoria Miles (NSERC) Urban climate hazards FTI

Topic: Modeling the Polar regions - what do we have and what are we missing?