Kick-off meeting for POMP project

The polar oceans, critical regulators of the global climate system, are among the ecosystems most impacted by climate change. This has major implications to the unique polar biodiversity and affects their potential for climate change mitigation through a significant uptake of atmospheric CO2.

Over the next four years, the 16 partners in the Polar Ocean Mitigation Potential (POMP) will address knowledge gaps in Polar Blue Carbon habitats and produce outputs with direct implications for the future management of the Polar Oceans. Ultimately, results will be synthesized into input for policy makers and managers to facilitate the adaptation and resilience of natural marine ecosystems with increasing climate change.

Presented their tasks and goals

The kickoff meeting took place in the Danish Technical University (Copenhagen, Denmark) from February 27th to February 29th, and brought together the project partners to discuss the next steps and organize workflows for successful project implementation. Work package leaders had the opportunity to organise and structure their plan and present the tasks and goals to all the collaborators on this project.

The meeting was held together with the sister project SEAquester, both funded by a Horizon Europe grant from the European Commission (call HORIZON-CL6-2023-CLIMATE-01-3: Ocean and coastal waters carbon- and biodiversity-rich ecosystems and habitats in Europe and the Polar Regions).

UiT professors Marit Reigstad, Camilla Svensen, Raul Primicerio and Bodil Bluhm from the Department of Arctic and Marine Biology contribute to this effort with their expertise in Arctic marine ecology, biodiversity and carbon cycling. They will be supported by a project-funded post-doctoral researcher and a UiT-supported PhD candidate.

Kortnytt fra Faculty of Biosciences, Fisheries and Economics

Aarskog, Karine Nigar karine.n.aarskog@uit.no Konstituert kommunikasjonssjef, seniorrådgiver og faggruppeleder, formidling