SGSD in Blue Carbon First

Professor Bill Austin, post-doctoral researcher Dr Craig Smeaton and PhD student Simone Riegel are members of a successful team (including Heriot-Watt University, Glasgow University and the Scottish Association for Marine Science) who have won a commercial tender bid with the Scottish government to undertake the first ever audit of Blue Carbon resources.

The team recently travelled to Orkney for an initial stakeholder meeting and to undertake fieldwork as part of the NERC-funded C-SIDE project. The work on Orkney also forms a part of Simone Riegel’s PhD project, which explores the ecosystem services and valuation of intertidal wetlands (supervisors: Laure Kuhfuss, Tim Stojanovic and Bill Austin).

Scotland’s First Minister has recently highlighted the work of St Andrews researchers in the development of the Blue Carbon impact agenda.

The photograph below shows Bill and Simone sampling on an intertidal saltmarsh at the Kyle of Tongue, Sutherland; backdrop - Ben Loyal.